Yesterday morning I woke up after having spent a remarkable Halloween evening handing out candy to over a thousand little and not so little Trick or Treaters or in this case Trunk or Treaters. Jim and I had volunteered to be part of a group of over a hundred cars who would bring our vehicles to our church parking lot to give the little spooksters in our community an opportunity to have a safe Halloween. We decorated the bed of Jim's pickup with dancing ghosts and smiling jack o'lanterns, dressed all in black (Jim says we were having a Johnny Cash moment), and proceeded to take our place in the lines. For the next hour we had a steady stream of children and parents passing by. The fact that it was really really cold didn't seem to keep many at home! Happily our twelve year old grandson and his dad joined us and a good time was had by all. It was a treat for us to see all the cute costumes; however, as a grandma I had to cringe to see all the shivering children in flimsy outfits and no coats and the slightly dazed look in the eyes of all the tiny ones. Luckily we ran out of time and candy at about the same time.
I don't have to tell you that this experience was a far cry from what we as children experienced on those Halloween nights of long ago! We can all relate many stories of tricks and treats in that time of innocence and close communities.
When I did wake up the morning after, I was a bit shocked and a little dazed to realize that October, my favorite month, is over and November is here! Someone in the paper today related the astonishment that she felt when overnight, businessess had miraculously transformed from Halloween witches and pumpkins to turkeys and holiday glitter. That can only mean that Christmas shopping is imminent. As much as I love the holiday, I don't love Christmas shopping and that really puts a damper on my Christmas spirit, but somehow I always manage.
Thanksgiving remains one of my favorite times of the year--no shopping for gifts, just great food and good company. During the years that Jim coached basketball, it was traditional to have a basketball tournment during the Thanksgiving holidays, and the first games were held on Thanksgiving Day. Thanksgiving took on a whole new meaning that often did not include the wonderful dinners and family get togethers that we had enjoyed before. I rejoiced that with retirement we returned to a more traditional time. This year it will a little different as we head for Flower Mound to our daughter's house. We have observed that over the years, old traditions have been changed and new traditions have emerged allowing for the blending of multiple families.
Speaking of traditions, I would love to hear about holiday traditions that you and your families have shared over the years. Hearing these stories is a great way to keep up my flagging spirits as I become immersed in the holiday throngs. Over the next few weeks I am also going to try to share ideas that I have been given to keep the holidays less stressful and the focus on the true meaning of our celebrations. I hope you will share, too. This will also help me to re-focus when I forget that it isn't all about shopping!
I also enjoy hearing those memories of Halloween past.
One note, before I close. We have started a new blog for the purpose of sharing information about the upcoming class reunion in Las Vegas. On the right side of this post I have provided a link to the new reunion blog and I hope you will visit it often for new information. You can also check on the previous words "new reunion blog."
I look forward to your sharing of your family traditions and favorite memories.
Nicki
Friday, November 2, 2007
Traditions
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9 comments:
Ah, "traditions" ... I can hear Tevye ("Fiddler on the Roof) warming up in the background ....
The "Trunk and Treat" sounds like a wonderful idea for providing a safe setting for the young 'uns to participate in the grand tradition of Hal O'Ween ... er, Halloween. We had a number of ghosts and goblins, and witches and gypsies, and others, at our door to partake of seasonal delights and foster incipient tooth decay, and we loved seeing all of them. And yet, Halloween over the past couple of decades has become bittersweet (no pun intended) for me, because I remember so well the relative ease and freedom we enjoyed when we were children going from door to door to take the wonderful and sometimes homemade offerings, without a concern that real "monsters" might lurk within the welcoming, lighted homes we approached.
I remember my grandmother making decorated cupcakes one year, and popcorn balls another, and "angel squares" and candied apples ... but even if I were as domestically inclined as she, I would not do such things now. It is too dangerous, or too suspect, and that thought fills me with sadness.
I remember that we also had the structured and supervised Wilson Elementary School Halloween Carnival every year, and while it was great fun, there was such a "frisson" as we kids (the older, but not too old kids) walked from house to house in camaraderie and the gathering darkness, feeling the chill in the air, and the tinge of mystery and the supernatural ... full of the high spirits of youth ... and the comforting strength of numbers and friends.
Thanksgiving was always done by my grandmother ... the perfect turkey, dressing, casseroles, pies ... the family around the table ... everything that one could dream or imagine ... and I hope, remember as I do. Unfortunately, I neglected to ask my grandmother to impart some of her culinary skills to me ... another regret ... and after she died, I spent many years trying, again and again, to duplicate her dressing, in particuar. After some absolute failures, which shall go otherwise unmentioned, I think I have at last come close. At least Yahn and our daughters like "my" dressing now, and request sometimes during the rest of the year. A treat for them, a blessing ... and the fulfillment of a "mitzvah" concerning family ... for me.
As for Christmas ... during several years in the 1950s, it was all the rage (at least in Childress) to have heavily flocked, but "real" Christmas trees. After having faux snow-covered trees for a couple of years in a row, my mother began her own (short-lived, as it turned out) tradition of having the tree flocked a different color every year. We had a pink tree, and a red tree, and a purple tree, and a blue tree (fortunately she was wise enough to skip yellow), until the year when she had the green Christmas tree flocked ... green ... at which point the nadir of that particular experiment was reached.
Jennifer,
I love your flocked Christmas tree story. I had to laugh. At Jim's family home, the Wilcoxson's always had one of the shiny aluminum trees with the colored light wheel. I have pictures of our girls from most Christmas mornings in their little housecoats, pj's and presents in front of that tree. We still have the tree in the attic.
When Jim and I married, the tradition at my house was to open gifts on Christmas Eve and at the Wilcoxson home the gifts were opened on Christmas morning. In order to be with both families,for several years Jim and I left Amarillo to drive to Muleshoe to be with my family for Christmas Eve. We had the Santa gifts in the trunk of the car so early, early on Christmas morning we loaded the sleeping girls in the car and drove from Muleshoe to Childress in time to get the girls and the gifts out of the car so Santa could come. It was very hectic and I would be exhausted. However, I remember very vividly in my mind's eye that as we drove so early in the morning in the dark, everything was very still and quiet with few cars on the road. We could look out at the houses and see Christmas lights in the distance at the farmhouses and it was so cold and peaceful for that time.
I also identify with your dressing story at Thanksgiving. My mother always made it and I never bothered to learn. Oh I tried, but never actually attempted to make it. Over the years Mother began to use a frozen dressing from Praters. We all delcared it to be as good as hers was and so sadly now I get my dressing out of the frozen food department, too. However, I am a good cook and make a really good sweet potato casserole that the girls ask for. Did someone say pumpkin pie??
My Mother, Lornadee, was an artist when it came to decorating a tree. In 1957 we lived on ave I....across from Jimmie and Jerry Gay. My Mother spent two days decorating this "flocked" tree....man oh man!!!!....it was a masterpiece......until.....until...Oh!!The Humanity!!!".....if any of you remember my older brother, Jimmy the "Scoundrel"....(he once placed a firecracker in a keyhole and asked me to look thru the keyhole.....I was blind for days...)..anyway......Jimmy, the evil older brother,...decides to demonstrate how he can placekick a football over the house........and he did it!!!!(the first time)....so....continuing to show off, he tried it again.....but that football went low....right thru the picture glass window....and into that freshly decorated tree......that tree exploded into a gazillion pieces.....all over the living room.......how Jimmy survived that event was beyond me....I am convinced that my Mother spit in his cereal for years after that...
Mike, I remember your house on Avenue I quite well. It would have been at 810 Avenue I, NW ... and my grandparents' house, until about 1957 or 1958, when they moved to 710 Avenue D, NW, was at 908 Avenue I, NW ... less than a block away from you. The Purcells lived a block behind both of us, on Avenue J, at that time, in a house that had previously been occupied by Lyman and Neysa Davenport and their kids, including Pat of course, with whom I spent many a Friday night, alternating Friday nights in my grandparents' home on Avenue I.
Directly behind my grandparents' house, on Avenue J, was the home of Donna Sanders' parents, Eldon and Eula (?). Once when I was about in first grade, I found a really scroungy looking orange kitten in the alley and persuaded my grandmother to let me adopt it. For some unknown reason, I named that cat "Eldon." And for years thereafter, once or twice a week when my grandmother went to call the cat in the morning ... "Eldon! Eldon!" ... Mr. Sanders would call back across the alley, "Yes, Mrs. Harp?" My grandmother said more than once that she hoped Mr. Sanders never got a look at that cat ....
Loved your story about the flocked tree. You guys put your parents through a LOT of trials, I am sure. I don't remember your mother well, after all the time that has passed, but I do know from recent personal experience that your Dad is the best!!!
Also enjoyed Nicki's story about Christmas on-the-go. Our respective parents lived too far away from each other to pull off what Nicki and Jim did, so we had to alternate Thanksgiving-Christmas with each set of family every year, until we finally started doing our own holiday celebrations and asking them to come to us.
I forgot one other significant resident of the 900 Block of I, NW ... Franklin Martin, Class of 1962 (Jimmy probably knew him), and "star" of my Air Force Academy Cadet story (under "Close Encounters of the Bobcat Kind"). Franklin and his mother, father and sister Sylvia (Pook) lived next door to my grandparents at 910 Avenue I, NW. After we moved to Avenue D, and about the time your family moved to Lubbock, I believe the Martins moved into the same house next to Doc McConnel where y'all had lived. And then, he magically appeared Guisseppe's in Colorado Springs, just when I needed him (or someone like him). Serendipity.
Ah, Xmas in Childress! What great times we had...Most of our immedicate family usually spent Xmas with us in Childress, my Mother and Dad, Lornadee`s parents, her sister, her husband and girls. In retrospect, I wonder where we put all of them, but apparently we managed.
Jenn, you remarked you did not remember Lornadee very well. That could mean you probably were never around her, because to know her, was to remember her. Of course I`m biased, but when you, Val, Mike and I visited Childress several years ago and spent the weekend, Dana (Purcell) Morris mentioned Lornadee was the most beautiful woman who ever lived in Childress. Of course, Mike and I agreed, as well as Mary Saied and Lynn (Purcell) Durham) who were also present at the time. Of course, everyone believes their Mother or wife is or was the most beautiful of all, but then again, we`re all biased in some degree on some subjects, aren`t we?
Also, Mike mentioned we lived accross the street from Jimmie and Jerry Gay, on Ave.I, when Jimmy kicked the football thru the picture window and knocked the Xmas tree all over the LR. I believe that was Ave. M, memory serves me well.
Also, I have another story about Lornadee I will relate at another time. It has to do with her being Pres. of the Wilson Elementary School PTA for 2 consecutive terms, and the change she was responsible for that favorably affected all of the kids in the Childress Ind. School District. You will probably remember the results when I remind you in the story.
Jim, I was having trouble remembering Jimmie and Jerry Gay living on Avenue I, so Avenue M makes better sense. Nevertheless, I do remember when y'all lived on Avenue I, just down the street from my grandparents. The last time I saw the house a few years ago in Childress, it was pink ... and I seem to have a memory of it being green when y'all lived there (?), and I did remember that it had a picture window in front.
I also remember being in that house at least a couple of times ... can't recall whether my parents were visiting you and Lornadee, or if it was just when a bunch of us kids had been playing and had gravitated to your place in our perambulations. And I do have a hazy memory of Lornadee ... like if I could just penetrate the slight mist of time, her face would become SO clear ... and I do remember that she was always very sweet and tolerant of all us kids. I likewise remember that some of us commented how cool Mike's parents were ... both of you.
If you have a picture of Lornadee ... or even better, one of the two of you ... from those days, we would be pleased to post it on the blog, as I did the "old" picture of Daddy in his uniform. I'll bet it would ring any number of bells for some who may also have a bit of trouble with penetrating the "mist" that sometimes comes with age. Just a suggestion ....
BTW, without pictures, I would have trouble remembering what I looked like then ... and I will be looking forward to your next promised story on Lornadee ....
oooooops......you are right....across from the Gays was ave M.......Ave I was when we were one block from (at different times) the Howards, the Davenports, the Gentrys, the Purcells,...i always get those two addresses mixed up.....and I am half way thru the cheerleader story.
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