Christian McCaffrey is like the wind wearing cleats. Ron Green is thankful, one last time

After 40 or 50 years of it — I forget which — this will be my last Thanksgiving column. It’s time.

It has been a remarkably popular feature (one man reads it as his family’s Thanksgiving blessing) simply, I think, because reflects what you’re feeling in the holiday season. On this Thanksgiving Day, I’m thankful for a few million things, among them:

• There’s still a newspaper in my driveway every morning. May it ever be.

• Grisham novels. Burke novels.

• A library. A bookstore. Beckoning, promising the worlds to which they can take us.

• Yesterday, before baseball was all home runs and strikeouts, before 3-pointers stole a lot of basketball’s good stuff, before 300-pounders were as common in football as grunts, before 300-yard drives and 100-mile per hour serves were ho-hum. Before a bunch of thinkers tried to improve our games and failed. Harumph!

• A rainy night, cold wind blowing, maybe a hint of snow.

• Christmas is coming. (A gentle reminder — if you want me to ho-ho-ho, don’t bring ‘The Little Drummer Boy’ or ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’ around. Thank you.)

• Football Saturdays and football Friday nights. They take us to another place for a while, thrill us, maybe chill us a little, make us stand and sing fight songs with funny words.

• A mockingbird sitting on the highest limb, better to be heard.

• The twilight hour, when Beth and I sit and talk about the day and the years. We’ve been together a long time now. It’s what sports writers would call a stable franchise.

• Our loved ones, scattered around but never far away.

• Our home, our street, our too-big-for-its-britches city.

• Race car drivers. Do they even know what they do is dangerous?

• Punt returners. When their football days are over, maybe they could get safer work riding bulls.

• In keeping with the storied tradition of this column, I am thankful for the wisdom I acquire at The Head Shop while getting my hair clipped. No, really.

• Luke Kuechly, like a sheriff taking care of business. Christian McCaffrey, like the wind wearing cleats. Greg Olsen, football player, enough said.

• I’m thankful for having worshiped in all those azaleas and dogwoods at that lovely shrine in Augusta, in the springtime, with all those memories hanging around.

• Friends.

• Rainbows. Sunsets.

• Birdies. Those days are gone but I still remember how it felt out there with the sun on your back and a golf club in your hand.

• I’m thankful for having known the likes of Bones McKinney, Al McGuire, Jim Valvano and Lefty Driesell, four one-of-a kinds.

• Kemba left the Hornets and the sky didn’t fall, partly because they have a good coach.

• Fried stuff.

• We don’t have to listen to politicians if we don’t want to.

• Country roads rambling between pastures and cornfields and tall pines, across little creeks, rising and falling softly on their way to nowhere special and in no hurry to get there.

• Memories. So many memories.

• Thanks to all those who created them and thank you for listening. See ya.

This story was originally published November 28, 2019 at 6:00 AM.