Let me wish you a happy Thanksgiving. After Christmas and Easter, it's third on my list of favorite times of the year.

As usual, I am writing this column before the holiday. If all has gone according to plan, Pat and I will be feasting at about 2 p.m. on Thursday at the table of cousins Jesse and Gennie Saldana in Huntington Beach, Calif.

With us is our oldest son Grover and daughter-in-law Laura and their four boys. We all went to Sea World on Saturday, Disneyland on Monday, California Adventure on Tuesday and Legoland yesterday. I hope I get to rest tomorrow.

Gennie is my first cousin through my mother's family. I see her at least every two years at Franco Family Reunions. It was at the reunion at our house this summer that she invited us to their dinner.

This is the second straight year Pat and I are celebrating thanksgiving out of state. Last year we feasted with our daughter Berney, her husband Andrew and their kids in Denton, Tex.

Which reminds me of some of the things for which I was thankful on that trip and this.

• The automobile industry, which provided Pat's Chrysler 200, which got us here. Her 1991 Chrysler finally became too old.
• The oil industry, which provided the fuel and lubricants our car needed.
• The food industry, which cooked, produced, processed and/or packaged the meals we ate along the way.
• The hospitality industry, which provided inns at which to rest and the Oceanside, Calif. resort we will inhabit for a week.

In other words, I am thankful for free enterprise. It set the Pilgrims free back in the early 1600s and still sets us free today.

Some people will argue the first Thanksgiving feast was held the first year of the Pilgrims. There's proof of that. But I argue the first real Thanksgiving feast came a year later, and there is proof of that.

The Pilgrims lived in a commune setting that first year. It was unproductive. Some people didn't contribute. They didn't have to. They were going to get a share anyway.

The harvest was poor and some of the Pilgrims starved to death. If there was a celebration, it was probably to give thanks for survival.

Governor Bradford threw off the shackles of the commune the next year, allowed individual ownership of land and instituted free enterprise. That year the Pilgrims celebrated endless bounty.

It's popular today to knock and mock free enterprise and the chieftains of our industrial might. I don't try to change the minds of those who think that way. I just give them time to grow.

"The proof is in the pudding," is something probably all of us have said, and the pudding in America is our lifestyle. You may be able to point to a person who is completely down and out, but surely you can see that generally we thrive.

Jose Serrano explains it better. He is my banker in Yakima, and he is also a veteran of eight years in the U.S. Army.

Jose called the other day to acknowledge Pat's birthday. We ended our conversation with a discussion of how much we appreciate America.

"I've seen some ugly places around the world," he said. "People in Egypt would kill to be as rich as the poorest American. One of my buddies threw a worn out pair of Jordan tennis shoes in the trash, and these two guys got into fight over them. And they were really hitting on each other."