Wilson the dachshund made Thanksgiving five years ago memorable for his family in Bulls Creek. Courtesy photo

When I moved away from Pennsylvania at the ripe old age of 18 to elope and conquer the world, I had all intentions of returning home to visit every weekend.

Before long, the seven-hour drive after a 40-hour workweek forced me to realize the implausibility of my original plan. Throw in two children, sketchy, unreliable cars and the price of Triple A, and the task became even more daunting.

After much consideration, my husband and I resolved that we would make the trip a few times each year, and that would have to do. We’ve stuck with that resolution going on 32 years now.

Nevertheless, one weekend that has always lured us back to the mountains in Bulls Creek is the last one in November for Mom’s turkey, Dad’s antics and visits from various family members bearing good gossip, side dishes and pies.

Even as a child, Thanksgiving held the most sentimental, sappy moments for me. There were consecutive years of Uncle Roger and his best friend, Chalmer, joining us at the dining room table to chow down on full plates of turkey, stuffing, noodles, mashed potatoes, corn and gravy, while the can-shaped tube of cranberry sauce, lovingly placed on a saucer for mere tradition, always sat untouched.

After scraping their first plates clean, both Uncle Roger and Chalmer would slip on their sneakers, zip up their jackets, shuffle out the back door and jog two or three circles around the house in the frigid cold.

They claimed this burned off some of the food they just ate and helped make room for more. My little brother and I would watch from inside, noses pressed to the kitchen window, laughing and waving at them each time they passed. Soon, they’d burst through the back door, cheeks rosy and frozen, huffing their way to the table to load up another plate.

After their bellies were glutted to the hilt, belts would pop open and they’d retire to the living room (Chalmer sometimes dropping from his chair and crawling for dramatics), and there they’d lie, flattened out on their stomachs while Dad reclined back in his chair and turned on the NFL.

Arguments would ensue over how much one either loved or hated the Cowboys and, several minutes into the game, all three of them would be snoring, only to startle awake if my brother or I tried to switch the channel to Nickelodeon.

Even after I became an adult, my own kids looked forward to waking up Thanksgiving morning, running downstairs to the kitchen, and finding Dad parked in a chair facing the stove, peering through the oven window with a set of binoculars.

“What are you doin’, Pappy?” they’d ask, and he’d inevitably look up and say, “bird watching.”

They anticipated these holiday visits, as each year brought the promise of bright orange hunting jackets hanging on porches, deer meat frying in cast-iron skillets, the Christmas tree being decorated in the corner and the possibility of seeing furry country critters making their last-minute preparations for the long winter ahead.

Five years ago, while we were all lazing around in the living room on Thanksgiving evening to watch “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy,” I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye. Looking out into the kitchen, I saw a shadow run across the linoleum into the dining room. I screamed loud enough for Wes to hear from his trailer next door, and everyone immediately jumped up, flicking on all the lights in the house, only to realize that a flying squirrel had somehow made its way into the kitchen, likely from the drafty gap beneath the cellar door.

The terrified squirrel scurried into the bathroom, where Mom and Dad’s dachshund, Wilson, cornered it, and a short battle erupted.

After a minute or two of banging and scraping sounds, a garbage can being knocked over and shampoo bottles tumbling into the bottom of the bathtub, Wilson emerged victorious with the dead animal hanging in his mouth.

The images of my daughter’s and her husband’s horrified faces are seared in my mind, as they watched the dog trying to eat the squirrel, fur and all on the living room carpet.

Perhaps that’s an unpleasant memory to leave you with, so we’ll move on to more pleasing Thanksgiving visions:

Uncle Lee leading in prayer with “Dear Heavenly Father,” silence except for growling stomachs, all heads bowed. Pap’s sister-in-law, Mary, sitting at the end of the table, legs crossed and sipping on a cup of steaming coffee. Coleman cracking open a metallic blue can and taking a swig, realizing he accidentally pulled Bud Light from the fridge instead of Pepsi. Mom, aghast and wondering who brought beer in the house.

The meal being over, dishes all washed, and all of the women gathered around the kitchen table with Black Friday newspaper ads sprawled out. Mom in her curlers, the girls in their slippers, me with my Christmas list, plotting a plan of action with my cousins, Pris & Dru. Getting up and leaving the house in the black of night so we can be stationed in line outside Toys R’Us by 4 a.m. Friday in below-freezing temps. The doors of the store sliding open, as we flood inside and run off in pairs, down the aisles in different directions. Dru running too fast, cutting a corner too close, and taking out an eight-foot-tall display of doll babies that clatter to the floor. Standing in line at Value City with Pris and squeezing the button on the fart machine tucked in my back pocket, upsetting shoppers in front of us; a couple of them leaving the line to avoid imminent stench, as we inch up closer to the checkout.

The girls and I nearly witnessing a fistfight at Michael’s, while someone at Target is carried out on a stretcher to a waiting ambulance. The chaos of Black Friday.

Of course, there were other years that presented their own complications: Breaking down along Interstate 81 in Virginia, sleeping all night in the back of the car, hitch-hiking a ride from an old man in a station wagon to the nearest town to buy parts at AutoZone, then back on the road, arriving at the house just an hour or two late for the scheduled dinner.

Bustling in with luggage while the turkey is kept warm and untouched, our loved ones all waiting with hungry anticipation and warm hugs. They can’t eat without us. And thank the Good Lord they don’t because we’d miss Dad at the dining room table stuffing a noodle up his nose and plucking it back out with the end prong of a fork to get a few laughs. All the while, Mom sits beside Dad, unfazed, holding her favorite fork with the wooden handle, swirling a piece of stuffing through puddles of gravy on her plate.

In the kitchen, two unsupervised kids are tearing away at the turkey carcass, trying to dig out the wishbone since they can’t get their hands on a magic genie’s lamp. Later, we’ll play Rook until midnight and snack on leftover meat, trying not to get the cards greasy.

Would I trade a lifetime of these Thanksgiving memories for a million dollars? Would I wipe my mind’s slate clean for exorbitant wealth and riches?

Not on your life. Some things can’t be bought.

I’ll cherish and be grateful for every moment that each Thanksgiving holds — the good, the bad and the ugly.

In my opinion, the planning, packing, traffic jams and driving will all be worth the hassle when I take that first step into the familiar comforts of home, where Dad sits waiting and watching for us from his recliner and asks “How was the drive?” and Mom takes me by the hand, pulling me to a refrigerator packed with pies, apple dumplings, fudge and more.

I’ll look around, take in the pictures hanging on the living room walls that span my lifetime and theirs, as a warm surge of tenderness swells in my chest, my heart so full, it just might burst.

“I missed you,” I’ll say.

Our hugs will convey other things that never need to be spoken, like the doubtless reassurance that I’ll keep returning home to Bulls Creek every Thanksgiving for a little slice of heaven on earth, always hungry for more.

Tracy Cranford grew up in Claysburg and now lives in Thomasville, N.C. She is the daughter of Butch and Sharon Weyandt.