Everybody Has a Story: Memories of Christmas past delight, hearten

I’m not sure where Dad found the sweet-smelling firs for our Christmas celebrations. They just appeared in our front room of our house on Center Street in Cascade Valley, near Moses Lake. My father always delivered the tree with a great flourish, dragging it through the front door, its branches swishing through the doorway and rubbing pine scent on the doorjamb.

My job was to make sure that the red metal stand had water in it so it wouldn’t dry out before Christmas Eve and Day. It was always a challenge to dodge the low-hung branches and water that thirsty tree so it didn’t start shedding its needles. Some years it seemed, despite my daily pouring and best efforts, the tree would eject those needles on an hourly basis and stick them in the carpet for unsuspecting bare toes.

We loaded the tree with homemade egg carton bell ornaments wrapped in crumpled tinfoil pierced with bent, red pipe-cleaners; shiny milk-glass Santas; and pearlized glass angels that my parents saved from their early marriage years. The top was a glass-tip ornament full of hot oil. I would lay on the rag rug spread under the tree and watch the yellow liquid boil and bubble, as I soaked in the tree’s delicious woodsy scent and the magic and wonder of this family holiday.

We were so very curious about what was in each gift set out underneath our resplendent tree. So, my brother Mike and I did the “Christmas-kid thing” and carefully pulled the tape from the Santa wrapping paper to take a peek. Then, there was the delicate job of refolding the paper and resticking the clear tape so that Mom and Dad wouldn’t know that we had looked. I am sure that they knew we tampered with those presents, but never said anything about it that I can recall. It was so hard to wait!

One Christmas, my father and his older brother Vance carried a large piece of plywood, two sawhorses, and several mysterious boxes into our spare bedroom. We were not allowed to go into that room by ourselves. The door was shut and locked and the room itself was cold, I’m sure to keep the house heating bill down. My brother and I could hear pounding within, and a low hum of conversation, but could not figure out what those two were up to.

Christmas Eve was our “gift opening” time, but Santa would leave a package or two for us to open on Christmas morning. Mike and I would be up in the early morning hours to open Santa’s presents, while Mom and Dad had a well-earned reprieve from their inquisitive children. Later that morning, they would wander into the front room in bathrobes, coffee cups in hand, and sit on the couch to watch us play with our Christmas gifts.

On this particular Christmas morning, Dad led us into that spare room. He and Vance had hammered tunnels, a plastic tree-covered mountain, a tiny train station and a set of steel tracks onto the plywood board. Sitting on the track was a Lionel electric train set for Mike. Well, Dad said it was for Mike, but I genuinely think it was for himself. After all, my brother was only 4 years old. Looking back on it now, my hardworking carpenter father surely needed a way to relax, and that seemed a perfect solution.

Once in that sacred room, we were told not to touch anything. Dad put oil in the smokestack and the engine puffed out wispy, white smoke as it chugged along the tracks. I still remember the smell of the train vapor in that hallowed chamber, with Dad and my uncle Vance chuckling, laughing and smoking too, cigarette haze curling around their heads.

Did my father have an electric train set as a youngster? I think not. How many times do we as adults try to make up for events or things we feel we missed as children?

I really wanted a Barbie as a kid and never got one. I’m not sure why I felt that way, but at the time it seemed the sweetest thing to get Barbie as a present.

Guess what I gave to my daughter for Christmas one year? A Barbie! And Barbie’s playhouse and van. And, as it turned out, she had little interest in that doll with a pinched waist and exaggerated body measurements. So the Barbie and the playhouse and the van were put in a Goodwill bag after a time.

So many years ago, but such profuse memories of Christmas past.

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