Recalling Christmas memories - 2004
It’s four in the morning, Monday, December 27 and I am sitting in Buford (our motor home) looking out the windshield at our silent, darkened campground. Our wide, horizontal dashboard is draped with cotton "snow" while several scenes Barb’s careful, loving hands have placed, display the season. There is a manger scene Barb has had forever with a huge new star hanging directly above it. Directly beyond the star is the RV of our dear campground friends, Sam and Donna Parks. There are trees and carolers, angels and candles, a musical Christmas lighthouse (thanks Fees), a musical Christmas clock (thanks Bob & Bobbie), a metal angel festooned with flowers (thanks Claudia) and holly leaves, a large, fabric Santa with "Ho Ho Ho" facing outside (thanks Mom True), and two soft angel bears (thanks Fee girls), one on each side of the windshield. We miss our Dickens village that previously brightened our living room along with our brightly lit and decorated tree, but mobility has its limits. Lifestyle changes can leave many treasured experiences behind. Fortunately we have photos and memories.
It’s four in the morning, Monday, December 27 and I am sitting in Buford (our motor home) looking out the windshield at our silent, darkened campground. Our wide, horizontal dashboard is draped with cotton "snow" while several scenes Barb’s careful, loving hands have placed, display the season. There is a manger scene Barb has had forever with a huge new star hanging directly above it. Directly beyond the star is the RV of our dear campground friends, Sam and Donna Parks. There are trees and carolers, angels and candles, a musical Christmas lighthouse (thanks Fees), a musical Christmas clock (thanks Bob & Bobbie), a metal angel festooned with flowers (thanks Claudia) and holly leaves, a large, fabric Santa with "Ho Ho Ho" facing outside (thanks Mom True), and two soft angel bears (thanks Fee girls), one on each side of the windshield. We miss our Dickens village that previously brightened our living room along with our brightly lit and decorated tree, but mobility has its limits. Lifestyle changes can leave many treasured experiences behind. Fortunately we have photos and memories.
Buford decorated for the season. Notice the Christmas tree by the door, the decorations in the big windows and the palm trees.
The same view at night
Over the last month or so I oftentimes thought about the wonderful treasure trove of Christmas memories I have collected throughout the years. I’m sure it’s a melding of several early Christmases, but my first fuzzy memory is of coming down the stairs Christmas morning and seeing the brightly lit blue spruce in our living room. After Daddy had gone down to "check to see if all is well" and turn on the lights, I went first as the smallest with Bobbie and "Sister" following close behind. I called my sister, Lois, "Sister" during most of my childhood, hardly knowing her as Lois for years. Wide eyed with wonder, we took down our stockings and spilled out the wonders the strange round and bumpy lumps promised. There were oranges, tangerines, brazil nuts, walnuts, almonds, hazel nuts and pecans all crying to be peeled or broken open and eaten. Each stocking also held a few small presents among the edibles. While we were permitted to open the small presents in our stockings and to play with those presents open and not wrapped in the brightly bundled packages under the tree, the major package opening would wait until after breakfast.
Oh! That agonizing wait as we contemplated the wonders hidden in those brightly colored packages stacked beneath the tree. It was almost too much for a small boy. Somehow we all endured through our traditional family Christmas breakfast of fried oysters, eggs and toast as anxious excitement steadily grew. Finally, the magical moment would come as we gathered ‘round the tree and Daddy passed out the presents one-by-one, carefully reading each tag. "This one’s from Mother. This one’s from Sister. This is from Bobbie. This one’s from Santa." There were always a number of presents from Santa who also had filled our stockings. I always wondered just how he got those presents down our chimney and out through our tiny fireplace. There was no wild frenzy of everyone opening at once as Mother directed us each in turn to open one present and give a proper thank you to the giver. Ribbons were gathered up and papers were carefully folded to be saved for next year. Depression Christmases taught us to save and recycle all we could. There were no black plastic bags filled with hastily ripped off paper back then in the early thirties.
The very first toy I remember was a shiny red race car with headlights that lit when a lever was moved to connect the lights to the battery inside the car. The headlights were two flashlight-type screw-in bulbs that were shaped just like real headlights. I clearly recall carefully placing the car on the floor in the darkest spot I could find under the piano. I then moved back and admired my wonderful race car, imagining it racing around the Indianapolis speedway track. I remember many other toys that thrilled a small boy: a game with a set of bright green marbles, a sand derrick that lifted sand in tiny metal buckets and dumped it into a bin that opened to fill a dump truck, a tiny bright red die cast metal Dusenburg roadster, my "Duzy," and other metal and rubber cars. Then there was the dream of every boy, coming down to find a Lionel electric train running on a figure eight track beneath the Christmas tree. Years later I would hear stories of Daddy and his brother, my Uncle Chase, waiting for me to go to bed in the days before that Christmas so they could set up my train and play with it - "to make sure it worked right." I still have that very train all packed away in its original box.
The real joys of the season were the wonderful family gatherings. There was always the visit to the Ramseys, my aunt Nell, Daddy’s sister, Uncle Alfred and cousins Carol, David and Laura Lee. Several years older, David always demonstrated some wondrous electric toys to my rapt attention. Christmas eve was the Dickinson family party at Grandma and Grandpa Dick’s. How different was their open branched pine tree from our blue spruce. I only remember one present from those parties, a beautiful metal speedboat with a wind up engine that drove a propeller that actually moved the boat in the water. A gift from my Uncle Harry, I would remember it several summers later, the spring motor rusted and useless, the propeller gone, the paint chipped and streaked, but to a small boy in the water, still a great toy boat to be run through the water by hand to the motor sound "rrrrrrrrrr" from my lips.
After the gift exchange and food, we all would go out caroling in the neighborhood. We had our own instrumental accompaniment with Harry’s horn, cousin Dale’s trombone, cousin Donna’s accordion, and Uncle Oscar’s trumpet. At least that’s how I remember it. I really missed those family occasions after we moved away to Cleveland when I was eight. I believe we may have gotten back for one several years later, but I’m not sure. I did have one more Christmas visit to Grandma and Grandpa Dick’s during my first year at Purdue when there wasn’t time for a trip home.
Another memorable Christmas was in 1940 when we were suddenly awakened by snowballs hitting our windows at three in the morning. Harold, Lois and two tiny babies bundled up in baskets had driven from Indiana through the snowy night to surprise us. We were all overwhelmed with joy, thankful they had made the trip safely in their Plymouth sedan. That was a truly joyous Christmas at our house on Blanch Avenue, the only Christmas we would spend there. I received two memorable gifts that year, a target air rifle that shot safe, marble-sized cork balls for indoor target practice (a BB gun was out of the question), and a battery powered telegraph set with two terminals connected by wires with green and white, waxed string insulation. Bobbie and I soon learned Morse code and spent hours telegraphing each other between her room on the third floor and my seat at the bottom of the stairs. We still try to reach each other with messages, sometimes successfully.
Another special Christmas memory was the Heights a Capella Choir Christmas concert. Bobbie sang in the choir with her friend Dottie Donner and I enjoyed it so much and was so proud that my sister was in the choir. Even though I was so much younger, I had a terrible crush on a little blonde girl who stood in the front row. I don’t even remember her name, but I do remember thinking she was about the most beautiful girl in the world.
I remember one Christmas when we went to Indiana. Driving at night through swirling snow, it took a very long time to get there. We used gasoline ration stamps saved up for the occasion to obtain enough fuel. The thirty-five mile per hour speed limit was about as fast as Pop wanted to go on the slippery, snow-covered roads. I don’t remember if Bobbie was with us on that trip or not.
Then there were Christmases on Idlewood when I was delivering the Plain Dealer through the snow and during which time Bobbie married Bob Grimm and moved away. When I started at Heights, one of my dreams was to sing in the choir. Even though I played an instrument and was in band and orchestra at Roxboro, I gave that up and joined the chorus, a prerequisite to being in "the choir." When I auditioned and earned a spot in the second tenor section I was thrilled, knowing I would be in the next Christmas concert. Another choir member was Dolores Osborn, a beautiful girl I had a terrible crush on since the eighth grade. Though I had taken her to the movies a few times, she was just not interested in me. I had given up even asking her for dates and merely admired her from afar.
December 17, 1943 everything changed. The choir was to sing downtown at Higbee’s department store, an annual event. Given permission to drive the family car, I asked several members of the choir including one girl who lived near Dolores. When she asked if I had room for one more and told me Dolores needed a ride I, of course, agreed. After the performance, the choir was treated to a short party with refreshments in a room at Higbee’s before we headed home. I sat with Dolores during the party where she did not seem so stand offish as before. As I took everyone home, I just happened to end up with Dolores as my last passenger. We spent the next two hours in the car in front of her house. I told her how I had felt about her since we met in the eighth grade. Before long we shared our first kiss and by the time I walked her to her door my feet wouldn’t touch the ground, my mind was whirling, uncontrolled, and I was deliriously in love.
At the choir Christmas party after the concert I gave her a card with the words, "A penny for your thoughts." and enclosed a bright new penny. Sometime later she returned the favor and the penny. I still have that penny. We were to share many Christmases together. We would also walk onto that stage together at Heights as choir alumni many times, sing Emite Spiritum Tum, and share memories with choir friends. We managed to do that one last time in 1996 at our fiftieth class reunion with about forty choir alums.
Then there was my first year at Purdue. Because of the wartime schedule of classes, we had only Christmas day off so there wasn’t time for me to go home. I wondered how Mom and Pop felt with all their children gone at Christmas for the very first time. It was a lonely one for me, but I did manage to get to Indianapolis to spend part of Christmas with Grandma and Granddad Dick. The other years at Purdue, the trip home for Christmas vacation was a major event of warmly happy visits with family and friends. Christmas 1946 was very special. After hitching a ride home with some friends, Mom, Pop and I took a train trip to Rochester New York to spend Christmas with Bobbie and Bob.
I remember the steam swirling alongside the train in the bitter cold and then a long delay in Batavia, New York - something about a switch being frozen. I remember walks through the snow-covered campus of Colgate, playing cards in the apartment and the warmth of a loving family. Bobbie and Bob taught me to play bridge that Christmas. It started in me a passion for the game which I played every chance I had all through college, including many all night sessions.
I remember other Christmases at the farm with the Swensons and two adorable little identical twin girls. No one Christmas stands out, but I remember many happy times and one moonlit walk through deep powdery snow down the lane and up a tiny frozen creek to the woods. That mental picture of Lois and Harold playing with me in the snow is very clear.
Christmas 1949 was another memorable one. Our very first Christmas together as man and wife, Dee and I had a bedroom in the home of a Lutheran minister and his family in Oak Park, IL, the Reverend Lorand V. Johnson, his wife and three children. They were wonderful people and immediately became like family. Our kitchen/dining room was in their basement. We cooked on one of those old, cast iron, laundry double burners most of you have never seen, used a card table set for meals and boxes for our dishes and utensils. I hung a green burlap curtain between our dining room and the rest of the basement to make things a bit more pleasant. I was going to paint the concrete floor, but the Johnsons gave us an old carpet to use to warm things up. We had no car so we walked everywhere and brought groceries home in a small, two-wheeled cart. The "El" and bus took us to work and out for entertainment. We hung a few Christmas tree lights around the basement for decoration.
The next Christmas I remember was in 1951 when we were living with Dee’s folks on Saybrook Road in University Heights. I had taken a job with Lubrizol in Wickliffe and we had moved back home with our tiny baby, Debbie. There were presents under a beautiful tree in their living room and my folks joined us for Christmas dinner at the Osborns’.
Christmas 1952 we were in a small rented house on Nipomo Street in Long Beach, California. We had a tiny tree and took our little Debbie up to Mt Baldy to see the snow. I remember her asking, "Who put all that white stuff out there?" I don’t remember Christmas 1953, but Dee was pregnant and I think we drove to Tucson to visit the Swensons.
Christmas 1954 our Christmas card was a photo of Deb and Mike in front of the fireplace in our rented duplex at 1111 Eddy Road in East Cleveland. It was our first Christmas after moving back to Cleveland to join my Dad at Johnson Stipher for the next twenty years. Once more we had a joyous family Christmas dinner at the Osborns’ with my folks.
Christmas memories during those years were not so vivid, blurring together into a montage. I remember: a Christmas dinner on Curry drive in Lyndhurst and two little ones bundled up in snow suits playing outside the front window - an aluminum Christmas tree with pink ornaments in our first home on Hawthorne Drive in Mayfield Heights - a tiny, round-faced Robbie in a canvas and wrought iron wing chair - Deb and Mike helping hang lights in the shrubbery in front - a tiny Dee Dee reaching for ornaments from the silver tree - several Heights Choir Christmas concerts where we sang "Emete" with a dwindling number of high school friends. During those years I remember a happy, wonderful family Christmas with the Grimms in Erie. Obstreperous cousins joined parents and Johnson grandparents in a marvelous Christmas dinner and celebration. I believe that was in 1957.
Christmas ‘63 found us moved into our big house on Lynn Park in Cleveland Heights. Once more, there are memories that are blurred in time and sequence. I still see: tall Christmas trees in the front window - a stack of soup cans - Dee sleeping on the couch wrapped up in her robe after decorating and wrapping all night - Gussie tearing into her wrapped toys - friends and family visiting - boisterous dinners with four, then five happy children, friends and family - our fifth child, Mindy taking her place in the family - a wide-eyed Mindy hearing a recording of Santa saying, "Ho Ho Ho" as he took his cookies and milk.
Then there were some not so happy Christmases as our marriage fell apart and our lives took different paths. The next really merry Christmases I remember were in Lagrange, Illinois with Iola and her daughters, Kim and Kara. We tried, but in spite of many happy times, we never quite put our lives together. Christmases 1986, 87 and 88 I spent alone in the folks home on Tippy. Those years I enjoyed Christmas day with friends, Norma and Al Hayes, who invited me to join them for family Christmas dinners. By this time I was attending Leesburg United Methodist Church (thanks for inviting me, Norma and Al) and singing in the choir. The next few Christmases would have been very bleak were it not for good friends from the church. I remember: singing Christmas carols in the town center - candlelight services - warm fellowship and a tiny porcelain Christmas tree from my sister, Lois, in the front window. That tree was my only decoration for several years.
Christmas 1989 dawned with a new lady in my life. Barbara and I decorated our little, artificial tree, the same one we placed outside Buford’s door this year. On that tree we carefully placed a special, lighted ornament with the words, "Our first Christmas together." This was also our first time singing together in the church choir Christmas Eve service. Christmas 1993 we celebrated our first Christmas together as man and wife. There were many happy Christmas celebrations with each of our families over the ensuing years. There were Christmas services and several memorable Christmas pageants at Morris Chapel when Barb became a Methodist pastor, serving Morris Chapel for six years. The warm fellowship with the congregation at Morris Chapel brought wonderful memories of costumed Christmas celebrations and delicious dinners.
There were many happy Christmas celebrations with our children and grandchildren in Michigan and Dayton as we shared time with our growing family. There were joyous gatherings with the Johnson girls and their families, usually at the Fees’ among mounds of toys and Christmas decorations. There were happy dinners in Dayton with Barb’s family. Our decorations at home grew as Barb’s Dickens village was expanded each year with gifts from her Mom and her sons, Michael and Adam. We decorated bigger trees and a growing light tree display graced our front yard.
Oh! That agonizing wait as we contemplated the wonders hidden in those brightly colored packages stacked beneath the tree. It was almost too much for a small boy. Somehow we all endured through our traditional family Christmas breakfast of fried oysters, eggs and toast as anxious excitement steadily grew. Finally, the magical moment would come as we gathered ‘round the tree and Daddy passed out the presents one-by-one, carefully reading each tag. "This one’s from Mother. This one’s from Sister. This is from Bobbie. This one’s from Santa." There were always a number of presents from Santa who also had filled our stockings. I always wondered just how he got those presents down our chimney and out through our tiny fireplace. There was no wild frenzy of everyone opening at once as Mother directed us each in turn to open one present and give a proper thank you to the giver. Ribbons were gathered up and papers were carefully folded to be saved for next year. Depression Christmases taught us to save and recycle all we could. There were no black plastic bags filled with hastily ripped off paper back then in the early thirties.
The very first toy I remember was a shiny red race car with headlights that lit when a lever was moved to connect the lights to the battery inside the car. The headlights were two flashlight-type screw-in bulbs that were shaped just like real headlights. I clearly recall carefully placing the car on the floor in the darkest spot I could find under the piano. I then moved back and admired my wonderful race car, imagining it racing around the Indianapolis speedway track. I remember many other toys that thrilled a small boy: a game with a set of bright green marbles, a sand derrick that lifted sand in tiny metal buckets and dumped it into a bin that opened to fill a dump truck, a tiny bright red die cast metal Dusenburg roadster, my "Duzy," and other metal and rubber cars. Then there was the dream of every boy, coming down to find a Lionel electric train running on a figure eight track beneath the Christmas tree. Years later I would hear stories of Daddy and his brother, my Uncle Chase, waiting for me to go to bed in the days before that Christmas so they could set up my train and play with it - "to make sure it worked right." I still have that very train all packed away in its original box.
The real joys of the season were the wonderful family gatherings. There was always the visit to the Ramseys, my aunt Nell, Daddy’s sister, Uncle Alfred and cousins Carol, David and Laura Lee. Several years older, David always demonstrated some wondrous electric toys to my rapt attention. Christmas eve was the Dickinson family party at Grandma and Grandpa Dick’s. How different was their open branched pine tree from our blue spruce. I only remember one present from those parties, a beautiful metal speedboat with a wind up engine that drove a propeller that actually moved the boat in the water. A gift from my Uncle Harry, I would remember it several summers later, the spring motor rusted and useless, the propeller gone, the paint chipped and streaked, but to a small boy in the water, still a great toy boat to be run through the water by hand to the motor sound "rrrrrrrrrr" from my lips.
After the gift exchange and food, we all would go out caroling in the neighborhood. We had our own instrumental accompaniment with Harry’s horn, cousin Dale’s trombone, cousin Donna’s accordion, and Uncle Oscar’s trumpet. At least that’s how I remember it. I really missed those family occasions after we moved away to Cleveland when I was eight. I believe we may have gotten back for one several years later, but I’m not sure. I did have one more Christmas visit to Grandma and Grandpa Dick’s during my first year at Purdue when there wasn’t time for a trip home.
Another memorable Christmas was in 1940 when we were suddenly awakened by snowballs hitting our windows at three in the morning. Harold, Lois and two tiny babies bundled up in baskets had driven from Indiana through the snowy night to surprise us. We were all overwhelmed with joy, thankful they had made the trip safely in their Plymouth sedan. That was a truly joyous Christmas at our house on Blanch Avenue, the only Christmas we would spend there. I received two memorable gifts that year, a target air rifle that shot safe, marble-sized cork balls for indoor target practice (a BB gun was out of the question), and a battery powered telegraph set with two terminals connected by wires with green and white, waxed string insulation. Bobbie and I soon learned Morse code and spent hours telegraphing each other between her room on the third floor and my seat at the bottom of the stairs. We still try to reach each other with messages, sometimes successfully.
Another special Christmas memory was the Heights a Capella Choir Christmas concert. Bobbie sang in the choir with her friend Dottie Donner and I enjoyed it so much and was so proud that my sister was in the choir. Even though I was so much younger, I had a terrible crush on a little blonde girl who stood in the front row. I don’t even remember her name, but I do remember thinking she was about the most beautiful girl in the world.
I remember one Christmas when we went to Indiana. Driving at night through swirling snow, it took a very long time to get there. We used gasoline ration stamps saved up for the occasion to obtain enough fuel. The thirty-five mile per hour speed limit was about as fast as Pop wanted to go on the slippery, snow-covered roads. I don’t remember if Bobbie was with us on that trip or not.
Then there were Christmases on Idlewood when I was delivering the Plain Dealer through the snow and during which time Bobbie married Bob Grimm and moved away. When I started at Heights, one of my dreams was to sing in the choir. Even though I played an instrument and was in band and orchestra at Roxboro, I gave that up and joined the chorus, a prerequisite to being in "the choir." When I auditioned and earned a spot in the second tenor section I was thrilled, knowing I would be in the next Christmas concert. Another choir member was Dolores Osborn, a beautiful girl I had a terrible crush on since the eighth grade. Though I had taken her to the movies a few times, she was just not interested in me. I had given up even asking her for dates and merely admired her from afar.
December 17, 1943 everything changed. The choir was to sing downtown at Higbee’s department store, an annual event. Given permission to drive the family car, I asked several members of the choir including one girl who lived near Dolores. When she asked if I had room for one more and told me Dolores needed a ride I, of course, agreed. After the performance, the choir was treated to a short party with refreshments in a room at Higbee’s before we headed home. I sat with Dolores during the party where she did not seem so stand offish as before. As I took everyone home, I just happened to end up with Dolores as my last passenger. We spent the next two hours in the car in front of her house. I told her how I had felt about her since we met in the eighth grade. Before long we shared our first kiss and by the time I walked her to her door my feet wouldn’t touch the ground, my mind was whirling, uncontrolled, and I was deliriously in love.
At the choir Christmas party after the concert I gave her a card with the words, "A penny for your thoughts." and enclosed a bright new penny. Sometime later she returned the favor and the penny. I still have that penny. We were to share many Christmases together. We would also walk onto that stage together at Heights as choir alumni many times, sing Emite Spiritum Tum, and share memories with choir friends. We managed to do that one last time in 1996 at our fiftieth class reunion with about forty choir alums.
Then there was my first year at Purdue. Because of the wartime schedule of classes, we had only Christmas day off so there wasn’t time for me to go home. I wondered how Mom and Pop felt with all their children gone at Christmas for the very first time. It was a lonely one for me, but I did manage to get to Indianapolis to spend part of Christmas with Grandma and Granddad Dick. The other years at Purdue, the trip home for Christmas vacation was a major event of warmly happy visits with family and friends. Christmas 1946 was very special. After hitching a ride home with some friends, Mom, Pop and I took a train trip to Rochester New York to spend Christmas with Bobbie and Bob.
I remember the steam swirling alongside the train in the bitter cold and then a long delay in Batavia, New York - something about a switch being frozen. I remember walks through the snow-covered campus of Colgate, playing cards in the apartment and the warmth of a loving family. Bobbie and Bob taught me to play bridge that Christmas. It started in me a passion for the game which I played every chance I had all through college, including many all night sessions.
I remember other Christmases at the farm with the Swensons and two adorable little identical twin girls. No one Christmas stands out, but I remember many happy times and one moonlit walk through deep powdery snow down the lane and up a tiny frozen creek to the woods. That mental picture of Lois and Harold playing with me in the snow is very clear.
Christmas 1949 was another memorable one. Our very first Christmas together as man and wife, Dee and I had a bedroom in the home of a Lutheran minister and his family in Oak Park, IL, the Reverend Lorand V. Johnson, his wife and three children. They were wonderful people and immediately became like family. Our kitchen/dining room was in their basement. We cooked on one of those old, cast iron, laundry double burners most of you have never seen, used a card table set for meals and boxes for our dishes and utensils. I hung a green burlap curtain between our dining room and the rest of the basement to make things a bit more pleasant. I was going to paint the concrete floor, but the Johnsons gave us an old carpet to use to warm things up. We had no car so we walked everywhere and brought groceries home in a small, two-wheeled cart. The "El" and bus took us to work and out for entertainment. We hung a few Christmas tree lights around the basement for decoration.
The next Christmas I remember was in 1951 when we were living with Dee’s folks on Saybrook Road in University Heights. I had taken a job with Lubrizol in Wickliffe and we had moved back home with our tiny baby, Debbie. There were presents under a beautiful tree in their living room and my folks joined us for Christmas dinner at the Osborns’.
Christmas 1952 we were in a small rented house on Nipomo Street in Long Beach, California. We had a tiny tree and took our little Debbie up to Mt Baldy to see the snow. I remember her asking, "Who put all that white stuff out there?" I don’t remember Christmas 1953, but Dee was pregnant and I think we drove to Tucson to visit the Swensons.
Christmas 1954 our Christmas card was a photo of Deb and Mike in front of the fireplace in our rented duplex at 1111 Eddy Road in East Cleveland. It was our first Christmas after moving back to Cleveland to join my Dad at Johnson Stipher for the next twenty years. Once more we had a joyous family Christmas dinner at the Osborns’ with my folks.
Christmas memories during those years were not so vivid, blurring together into a montage. I remember: a Christmas dinner on Curry drive in Lyndhurst and two little ones bundled up in snow suits playing outside the front window - an aluminum Christmas tree with pink ornaments in our first home on Hawthorne Drive in Mayfield Heights - a tiny, round-faced Robbie in a canvas and wrought iron wing chair - Deb and Mike helping hang lights in the shrubbery in front - a tiny Dee Dee reaching for ornaments from the silver tree - several Heights Choir Christmas concerts where we sang "Emete" with a dwindling number of high school friends. During those years I remember a happy, wonderful family Christmas with the Grimms in Erie. Obstreperous cousins joined parents and Johnson grandparents in a marvelous Christmas dinner and celebration. I believe that was in 1957.
Christmas ‘63 found us moved into our big house on Lynn Park in Cleveland Heights. Once more, there are memories that are blurred in time and sequence. I still see: tall Christmas trees in the front window - a stack of soup cans - Dee sleeping on the couch wrapped up in her robe after decorating and wrapping all night - Gussie tearing into her wrapped toys - friends and family visiting - boisterous dinners with four, then five happy children, friends and family - our fifth child, Mindy taking her place in the family - a wide-eyed Mindy hearing a recording of Santa saying, "Ho Ho Ho" as he took his cookies and milk.
Then there were some not so happy Christmases as our marriage fell apart and our lives took different paths. The next really merry Christmases I remember were in Lagrange, Illinois with Iola and her daughters, Kim and Kara. We tried, but in spite of many happy times, we never quite put our lives together. Christmases 1986, 87 and 88 I spent alone in the folks home on Tippy. Those years I enjoyed Christmas day with friends, Norma and Al Hayes, who invited me to join them for family Christmas dinners. By this time I was attending Leesburg United Methodist Church (thanks for inviting me, Norma and Al) and singing in the choir. The next few Christmases would have been very bleak were it not for good friends from the church. I remember: singing Christmas carols in the town center - candlelight services - warm fellowship and a tiny porcelain Christmas tree from my sister, Lois, in the front window. That tree was my only decoration for several years.
Christmas 1989 dawned with a new lady in my life. Barbara and I decorated our little, artificial tree, the same one we placed outside Buford’s door this year. On that tree we carefully placed a special, lighted ornament with the words, "Our first Christmas together." This was also our first time singing together in the church choir Christmas Eve service. Christmas 1993 we celebrated our first Christmas together as man and wife. There were many happy Christmas celebrations with each of our families over the ensuing years. There were Christmas services and several memorable Christmas pageants at Morris Chapel when Barb became a Methodist pastor, serving Morris Chapel for six years. The warm fellowship with the congregation at Morris Chapel brought wonderful memories of costumed Christmas celebrations and delicious dinners.
There were many happy Christmas celebrations with our children and grandchildren in Michigan and Dayton as we shared time with our growing family. There were joyous gatherings with the Johnson girls and their families, usually at the Fees’ among mounds of toys and Christmas decorations. There were happy dinners in Dayton with Barb’s family. Our decorations at home grew as Barb’s Dickens village was expanded each year with gifts from her Mom and her sons, Michael and Adam. We decorated bigger trees and a growing light tree display graced our front yard.
Christmas 1998 pageant costumes at Morris Chapel UMC. Barb in her heyday doing what she loved most and among many good friends.
Christmas 2000, the last Christmas of the second millennium, was a saddening trial as Barb served her last Christmas and Sunday as Pastor. Her worsening health forced her to step down from the pulpit. It was a tearful congregation that walked past us and said their goodbyes after that last Sunday service of 2000. These wonderful people had become close friends and truly our local family. Many of them remain as family to this day.
Our dining room with our last Dickens village display, Christmas 2001. This would stay in place until July of 2002 after our long delayed return from California
I built a four-by-eight-foot table to display our complete Dickens village and we decorated a large tree with lights built in. That year saw us off on a new adventure as we headed for a six-week tour of the southwest. We enjoyed Christmas with the Howard Johnson III family in Texas, but Barb was having increasing paralysis in her hands. By the time we reached Deb’s in California in early January it was obvious something serious was wrong. Two surgeries to her spine, six weeks in the hospital and twelve weeks with her head in a halo device and our six-week trip had extended into a six-month adventure. It all started just before Christmas. When we arrived home in July, all of our Christmas decorations were still in place - certainly the longest lasting Christmas display ever. It was also the last time we used all those decorations.
This year saw our first Christmas day apart from all of our families including our church families. After a Thanksgiving day/Christmas at the Fees’ with our three Michigan girls, their husbands and five grandchildren, we worked preparing to head to Dayton and then south. We spent a happy pre-Christmas celebration at Adam’s with Barb’s entire family. Her Mom, her brother, Bob and his wife, Rose, son Michael, son Adam and his wife Shelly, and granddaughters, Nina (5), Bailey (4) and Diana (1) all shared in the festivities. After the celebration we headed home to complete preparation of the annex for our delayed trip south.
Christmas eve we watched several old movies on TV including "Holiday Inn" (renamed "White Christmas" for today’s audience, "Sound of Music" and "It’s a wonderful Life." We noted that Hollywood’s offerings have certainly deteriorated since those warm, love expounding movies were made.
Far from families and church friends we were fortunate to share Christmas day with Donna and Sam Parks, our campground friends from last year. After two days of forty and fifty-degree cloudy, misty weather, the skies opened up on the day before Christmas and it poured off and on, mostly on, until late on Christmas day. Despite the foul weather we had a wonderful Christmas, spending a day of good food, friendly conversation and playing cards with the Parks in their RV. The day after Christmas we returned the favor and spent the day in Buford with them, a near repeat of Christmas day as we ate Christmas leftovers and again played cards. The skies had cleared, but it was still cold and windy.
So this is my collection of Christmas memories - at least those that are still fresh in this old mind. I know there are many more buried just below the surfaces which may or may not surface at another time. The most important of these memories are those of the love shared with family and friends - of Christmas meals, music, celebration and relaxation and many times singing, "Happy birthday dear Jesus" each Christmas morning. After all the gifts, glitz and glitter it is still the celebration of his birth and the meaning of that birth that is most important.
So I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and prosperous new year.
2007 Note: I plan to add more photos soon as I find and scan them to insert. I will also write some new paraghraphs to bring my "memories" up to date as much has transpired since 2004.
Love and peace to you all, Ho
