Every good feeling I have about Christmas today is a remnant of the excitement and joy I felt as a child at Christmas.
When we were kids, there always seemed to be a huge pile of presents around the tree for my brother and me. It was hard to wait till Christmas to open them. Putting all those presents around the tree and making us wait to open them was like putting a bowl of food in front of a dog and not letting him eat. When I was old enough to go to school, my mother took a job in the office of a textile mill in Rome. We always called her when we got home from school. When Christmas was near, we called and begged her to let us open just one present early. It must have been pretty annoying, because sometimes she gave in.
This is one of my earliest Christmases. It must have been around 1952. I would have been two years old and my brother would have been five.
I’m holding a toy truck, possibly a garbage truck, and my brother is torn between the train set and the Motorcade service station and car wash. I remember the metal Motorcade, with the elevator to take the cars up to parking on the roof and the ramp that let them scoot back down to the floor. It looks like we also got a ten-pin bowling set and a toy telephone. My brother got a cap pistol. The picture was taken in our living room, and what you can see here is the entire room.
This was a different Christmas. We got Lincoln Logs.
The bike is my brother’s first. It was green.
Here is my father and my brother Henry at yet another Christmas. This might have been before I was born. The sofa and chair are the same but without slip covers.
Here’s Leah with her familys’ tree.
When I look back at my family Christmases, I have no idea how my parents managed. In those days, my mother kept a budget down to the penny. Here are two pages from her spending record from 1949, before I was born. My parents and Henry lived in Akron, Ohio, at that time.
Some of the expenses look amazingly small today. Car insurance was $4.00. The house payment was $14.00. The electric bill was $1.75, and the gas bill was $3.00. My mother had bought a sewing machine and was making payments on it. But look at groceries – $26.00. Sounds low until you realize that was for two weeks at a time that my father was making under $200 a month.
By the time I was born in May 1950, my family had moved back to Rome and bought a house on Redmond Road. It was one of around two dozen identical duplexes that had been built as temporary housing for staff at Battey General Hospital, which opened at the end of Redmond Road in 1943 as a hospital for sick, wounded and disabled servicemen. Each unit of the duplex had a living room, eat-in kitchen, two bedrooms and a bathroom. My parents rented the other side of our duplex to a divorced woman and her child. More than a half a century later, that woman would share a room with my mother in a nursing home on Redmond Circle, an extension of Redmond Road.
Here is a page from my mother’s spending record from July, 1950.
The house payment was now $66.36. Groceries were $30.00. Henry got a pair of shoes for $2.00. It looks like my father was paying off insulation he bought for the house. My father worked at the Post Office then. It looks like his semi-monthly salary was $113.00, which they supplemented with $42.00 in rent for the other side of the duplex. At the end of the two-week period, they had managed to save a little over $14.00.
So, I don’t really know how they managed Christmas for us two kids, but I know why they did.
My mother continued to decorate her house and a tree in her living room, right up to the time she died.
She loved Christmas, and I imagine that part of that was because of her own memories of Christmas when we were young.
When my mother and Leah’s parents were alive, we decorated for Christmas.
Leah is decorating the tree. My last doberman, Zeus, is trying to snooze on his living room bed. The late, great Zoe is peeking out the sliding glass door. Looking for Santa, I suppose.
My parents are gone now, and so are Leah’s. We have no children and no close family here. We don’t decorate or celebrate Christmas. We’ll probably eat some turkey sliced for us at the Walmart deli, and maybe we’ll fix some packaged dressing. But really, all that’s left of the holiday for us is the ghost of Christmas past.
Those old photos could be of me and my older brother back in the day, even down to the suspenders (without our subsequent 6 more siblings).
Those ledgers of your mothers are a serious treasure. Faulkner used an old family ledger to inspire part of Go Down, Moses. You should get to writing your masterpiece too.
This is such a beautiful post, Mark. I love reading your stories of Christmas and seeing how your parents gave you this wonderful gift of such lovely memories. Your mom’s bookkeeping ledgers are such an incredible treasure. The photo of your dad in the chair with you and your brother is so sweet. Such a compilation of heartfelt memories here. Thank you for sharing it with us. It’s a gift, you know!
The service station! The boy across the street had one of those and let me play with it, too. We were younger than the age at which boys start to think of girls as having cooties.
We, too, are parent-less, now, and childless by choice. We decorate minimally: candles in windows, a green wreath on the door, and a small metal twig tree decorated as the fancy strikes. One year it became a bottle tree with liquor miniatures, which we had fun collecting and emptying. We cook whatever we like, have friends in or not. This year it will be braised short ribs, mashed potatoes, and green beans. Our neighbor who will share the meal is bringing his excellent apple pie.
Hope you, Leah, and the four-legged companions enjoy health and contentment this season.
Pablo — I didn’t remember that about Faulkner until you mentioned it. I’ll definitely be keeping the ledger.
Robin — Thanks. All of those things seem like they happened to someone else. I suppose in a way they did.
Minnie –That’s cool about the metal service station!
Leah and I both like the way you’re decorating for Christmas, and what you’re doing for Christmas dinner, too. We’re going to have to look into the liquor miniatures. We’re planning on leaving most of our decorations for the people who are buying out house. They have two small kids, and they said they put a tree up in every room. But when Leah was going through some of our stuff, she found a few ornaments that are so nice we will probably keep them. It won’t hurt to hang a few ornaments here and there.