The Day Before the Day

Christmas Eve has always been my special day. That is the day that my mother's family got together. We lived in Orange and we would load up our car and go to my great grandmother's house in the woods at Nibblett's Bluff for our family Christmas. By the time we all got there there would be ten of us packed in an old five room farmhouse. My great grandmother, Ma lived there with her bachelor son, my great uncle Dan. Uncle Dan would go out to the woods and cut a small pine tree for the Christmas tree and would use some ancient decorations on it. The house was heated by butane heaters and a fireplace and the heat would bring out the pine smell from the fresh-cut tree. When a small fire was in the fireplace next to the tree it really looked like Christmas.

The house was "L" shaped with the living room and two bedrooms across the front and the dining room and the kitchen going to the back. Across the front of the house was a porch, part was open and part was the screened in "sleeping porch". The end of the porch was enclosed and the indoor bathroom was installed in the middle 1950's. Prior to that was the outhouse. The indoor bathroom had plumbing, but was unheated, somewhat an improvement over the outhouse.

The dining room contained a table big enough to feed the ten of us, later eleven when my cousin Charlie joined the pack. There was enough food to feed at least twenty. Ma cooked, my mother cooked, my grandmother cooked and my aunt cooked. We had food out the wazoo and it was not uncommon to have a roll tossed at you when you asked for on to be passed to you. It was a loose, good time at the table. After we ate we would go back to the living room for the opening of the presents.

We sat where we could find a place to sit and passed the presents around. I got the usual stuff, toys and clothes. Usually a pretty good haul since my sister and I were the only kids. We would sit around a while and get all the wrapping paper cleaned up and the remains of the family feed cleared away and it would be time to head home.

When my sister and I got home we would find that Santa Clause had paid us an early visit. It was not too often that we had to wait until Christmas morning. After a few years I figured out the Santa System, but I kept my mouth shut about it and milked the system as long as Icould. My favorite thing to receive was toy guns, pistols and rifles. Back in those days they fired the paper caps on a roll. After I tried out my new guns the yard looked like a ticker tape parade had been held there. If I had yesterday's toys to sell today on Ebay I could move to a condo in Colorado.

In 1964 my dad died and a few years later my grandmother, grandfather and great grandmother, & great uncle followed in 2006 by Uncle Tom. The old folks have "gone home." My sister and I have grown children and I have grandchildren. Those good old Christmas get-to-gethers have gone away too. Life got in the way and we don't visit like we should. The thing that remains is the memory of those old days. The old place and the land was sold off years ago and the man that bought it improved it all, but when I see it I see it as it was, life moves on. I still wear Old Spice and Brute and like honky-tonk music. I'm pretty much a reclusive old geezer. Time goes by and by and by and then I wonder where it went. I guess that is how life is now days.

Christmas Eve still has a special feel even after so many years and so many changes. My wish is for everyone to have good memories and a MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Oh by the way, one year I got a Daisy Red Ryder BB gun and I didn't shoot my eye out!