Legends

My father’s side of the the family is form Terry, a town located in the eastern part of Montana. My grandparents owned an ran a bar and cafe up until I was around nine years old.  As a child the bar was the best place to go and visit, my cousins and I turned the restaurant into our playground.  After my grandmother retired and sold the restaurant my memories changed from the playing in the cafe to watching movies in my grandmothers living room.  My grandmother had  one  VHS film that was worth watching and it was ‘Legends of the Fall.’ My mother would watch the American classic every time we visited.  At first I hated the film.  I was too young to understand it.  However, As my younger brother and I began to revisit the film when we got to an age where we could appreciate it, became one of our favorites. 

Terry became our thanksgiving destination as it allowed us to hunt while enjoying the common thanksgiving traditions.   From these visits and our previous in the past my brother and I birthed a Thanksgiving ritual.  Every year him and I sneak away from all of our family members within a few days of thanksgiving to watch Legends by ourselves.  

I don’t fully understand what it is exactly about the film that we relate to thanksgiving, or what urges us to watch it every year.  I'm sure that we connected the film to terry and then terry to Thanksgiving, and thus the connection.  However, I know there is much more too it.  The nature of the film is about a family growing up in the state of Montana in the 1800s.  Its story contains love, war, hunting, brotherhood, and more.   The characters in the film live a self sustaining life in the mountains, which is something I only dream of doing.  My brother Chase and I have a connection with this film through our personal relationship.  We correlate with the season of giving thanks and remembering the pioneers that once founded our country. And we pay our respects every year in our ritualistic viewing of the film.