Daddy’s Hand
Christmas Trees
It was the a very special Friday night dance at Mt Pleasant Jr High School. Understand, there was a dance at the Jr High School every other Friday night throughout the year so most of them weren’t all that special, but this one was very special. First of all, it was the Friday before Thanksgiving which meant that this was the Thanksgiving dance. They were even having a drawing to give away a free turkey – not a fresh or frozen one – well actually I guess you could say it was a very fresh turkey since it was still alive – in a cage. They had it sitting up on a table in a cage during the entire dance so everyone could see it, and hear it, and smell it. That made this a special dance for everyone. But this was a very special dance night for me for a couple of other reasons.
Back in September, my parents had enrolled me in the Mt. Pleasant Jr High School, after I had spent my entire school career in Middletown, Delaware. They didn’t enroll any of my other siblings, just me. We were all still going to live in Middletown, except that technically I was supposed to be living with Uncle Johnnie and Aunt Mary (Aunt Mary is my mother’s sister). I was to be dropped off at my Uncle Harold’s (he is my father’s older brother) in Middletown by Daddy early on Monday morning. Uncle Harold worked in Wilmington and he would take me to 6th St. where I was to catch a city bus in front of the Gimbel’s department store and ride it up to just around the corner from Mt Pleasant Jr High. On Monday afternoon I would take the school bus to Uncle Johnnie’s and Aunt Mary’s where I would stay each night until Friday, when I would catch the city bus back to downtown Wilmington. I walked several blocks to the printing company where my uncle worked to catch a ride home to Middletown.
All of this was taking place because Daddy and Mommy were part of a group in Middletown that were trying to bring about some major changes in the Middletown school system. As a result of their efforts, they had learned that some of the teachers were harassing the children of the rebellious parents, including me and a friend of mine. I remember one afternoon our geography teacher zeroing in on my friend, Kenny. She said in front of the class that he was picking his nose and that it was gross and just plain ignorant. She continued to ridicule him about how nasty it was and then started in on how ignorant and inappropriate his parents must be to have a child like him acting the way he did. It was awful. I sat nearby and she looked right at me while she continued to talk about him and his parents. I had the definite feeling that I was going to be next, but for some reason she finished up her tirade on Kenny, still looking at me, and went back to teaching the class.
I never said anything to Daddy and Mommy, but Kenny’s parents found out and told my folks what was going on with some of the teachers. They then began working on a plan to get me out of that school system.
The plan worked for awhile, but as the year progressed I spent less time at Aunt Mary’s and more time in Middletown, making the trip on a daily basis with Uncle Harold. Some of that deterioration in the plan started with the Friday night dances.
It wasn’t long after I started at Mt Pleasant, that I became interested in this very special girl. I talked to my best “buddy” about her and wondered if I asked her out to a Friday night dance, if she would say, “Yes.” He then talked to her best friend and asked her to find out if Ralph asked Karen to go to a Friday night dance, would she say, “Yes.” So, Karen’s best girl friend asked Karen and Karen said that she would. Her best girl friend told my best buddy that Karen said she would. My best buddy then relayed the message back to me that if I asked her, she would say, “Yes.” Wow! Of course there was only one major problem with all of this, I had not asked her – yet.
Friday night was fast approaching and I still had not asked her. On Wednesday, after the lunch break, I had gone back to my homeroom to pick up my books for the afternoon classes and just as I was about to walk back out, Karen came through the door. When she saw me, her blue eyes were sparkling and she immediately smiled and a slight blush crept up her cheeks. My heart was pounding so hard I thought sure she could hear it. I was having difficulty breathing, but somehow I got the words out and asked her to the Friday night dance. She said, “Yes!” She gathered up her books for our afternoon classes and from that time on we were together throughout the school day.
Oh, there was another major problem! I was in eighth grade. I didn’t have a license and I didn’t have a car and my folks lived in Middletown and I was supposed to be meeting Uncle Harold Friday after school to head back to Middletown and my folks didn’t know anything about a Friday night dance or that I had asked a girl out for a date. Wow! What a mess! Well, not quite as much of a mess as it could have been. Just because I had asked her to be my date Friday night, didn’t mean that I had to pick her up and take her home. It just meant that we would both be at the dance and meet and spend the time at the dance together. I was able to make arrangements through my Uncle Johnny to get to the dance. Daddy, Mommy, and all the kids came and picked me up after the dance and back to Middletown we went. That first date was such a success that Karen and I were together every chance we got in school and of course every Friday night dance. I don’t know how Daddy and Mommy worked it all out, but they did and they were there every Friday night to pick me up and take me home.
That, of course, had been months earlier, we were now at the Thanksgiving dance and I was dancing with Karen. They were playing, “Put Your Head on My Shoulder,” a beautiful slow dance and Karen had her head on my shoulder. The words of the song say, “Whisper in my ear…” so I decided to whisper in Karen’s ear. I told her I loved her – first girl I ever said that to. She said she loved me too. Wow! Wow! So, naturally the next thing I did was to give her a kiss – first girl I ever kissed. She kissed me back. Wow! Wow! Wow! Talk about a special night!
They then had the drawing for the live turkey…you guessed it, I won it. My family couldn’t believe it when I walked out to the car that night with a live turkey in a cage. We put it in the trunk and headed for Middletown.
The next day Daddy and I took the turkey into our back yard. He got a hatchet and a piece of wood. Somehow, we were able to hold that turkey on that board in such a way that Daddy was able to chop off the turkey’s head. I don’t remember all of the gory details except that he then hung it on our old swing set and that turkey ended up as our Sunday dinner. It was not our Thanksgiving turkey because we always had Thanksgiving at Grandmom George’s and she supplied the turkey.
I learned many years later that Daddy got into big trouble with Mommy the week before all of this took place. Daddy was a member of the Lions Club in Middletown. Actually, he wasn’t just a member, he had been a pretty popular leader in the local Lions Club over the years. In fact at one time, he was being considered for the position of Lt Governor of the District. They had even printed up some posters with his picture on it, but some sort of political deal was struck before the Lions Club District election so he didn’t end up running. I remember as a kid that every year just after Thanksgiving, the Lions Club rented out the movie theatre in Middletown on a Saturday afternoon and all of us kids got in free. They usually had some cartoons that were followed by a Gene Autry or Roy Rogers movie. When the movie was over the Lions Club members handed out a bag of candy that also had an orange in it to every kid as they left. It was pretty neat, especially since I knew several of the Lions Club members and I sometimes helped hand out the bags.
Anyway, this particular year the Lions Club had a raffle throughout the District to raise the money they needed for their special projects. Each of the members was supposed to sell raffle chances to win a brand new Buick. Daddy had a book of tickets he was supposed to sell, but he forgot about it until the night the money was due. Consequently he bought the whole book of tickets himself. Mommy was furious when she found out. Money was really tight that year and she couldn’t believe that he would waste it on a bunch of worthless raffle tickets. Where were they going to get the money to feed and take care of their five children, let alone do Christmas for everyone? She was really upset.
The week after Thanksgiving Daddy was checking out something on the roof of Grandmom George’s house when one of the Lions Club members drove into the driveway. He exchanged greetings with Daddy and asked him to come down off the ladder so he could talk to him. Daddy complied and the member informed him that he had won one of the new Buicks. One of his worthless raffle tickets had been drawn and he was the winner of a brand new Buick. That was why he wanted Daddy to come down and talk to him. He was afraid if he told him while he was on the ladder, he might have fallen.
Of course Daddy was very pleased and couldn’t wait to tell Mommy. The next week-end we all squeezed into that new Buick and drove it around the country-side. It was a beautiful car. That was also the last week-end we ever saw that car. We didn’t know it until later, but Daddy took that new Buick and traded it in for a new Pontiac station wagon. Somehow he worked a deal with the guy who owned the Pontiac dealership in Odessa to get some much needed cash in exchange for that Buick, as well as a new station wagon. Winning that car helped make Christmas extra special that year, but that wasn’t the only thing special that happened.
Over the years Daddy earned a reputation at Christmas time for waiting until Christmas Eve to purchase the family Christmas tree. I can remember going with him on Christmas Eve to the town square in Middletown where there was a guy selling Christmas trees. There usually weren’t a whole lot to choose from and the cost was almost always about fifty cents a tree. Daddy would pick out the best from what was left, take it home, set it up with the worst side of the tree hidden in a corner of the living room. He would put the lights on the tree and then Mommy would add the decorations in such a way that the tree would ultimately be beautiful in spite of the lack of branches in some places.
One year, after we had moved to Newark, he had to actually buy three trees (I think the guy even gave them to him, they were so bad) and put them together as one, in order to have a somewhat acceptable tree. The family talked about that tree(s) for years.
This particular year, however, Daddy almost blew it as far as a tree for Christmas was concerned. As usual, he waited until the last minute to get a tree. The problem this particular year was that we had a very bad snow storm on Christmas Eve and he wasn’t able to get out of our driveway to get to town to get the tree. Christmas and no Christmas tree. No way was Daddy going to let that happen. After supper, he told me to get dressed to go with him outside in the snow storm. We went out the back door onto the patio and he handed me a hand saw to carry and he had a hatchet. We made our way across the driveway, down a hill and across the neighbors’ backyards toward the nearby stream and woods. This was a part of the woods I wasn’t all that well acquainted with at the time. I was used to heading straight out back through our yard to the woods. I knew all the trails back there, even as far as the railroad tracks. I really didn’t know the trails that well the direction he was headed that night.
Daddy blazed a trail through the heavy snow and I tried to follow in his steps. We carefully made our way across the stream at the bottom of the hill. We had to be especially careful since the snow had drifted in places along the stream bank and if you made a wrong step, you could end up soaking wet in some very cold water. We made it across the stream okay and once on the other side, Daddy found a trail and away we went through the woods. The snow didn’t seem to be as heavy through the woods so we were able to move along at a pretty good clip. I remember being impressed with how quiet it seemed to be. The only sound was the crunch of our boots through the snow. We came to a bit of a hill that we had to climb. When we got to the top of that hill, we were on the edge of a field. It was really dark and the snow all of a sudden was coming down really hard. I tried to follow in Daddy’s footsteps because the snow was pretty deep and it seemed easier to keep my head down then try to look straight ahead. Every time I looked up, the wind and snow would hit me in the face and it actually brought tears to my eyes, so I kept my head down, focused on his tracks, as we crossed the field. We hadn’t gone all that far when we were back to another edge of the woods. Daddy stopped, seemed to be getting his bearings and then headed off again. We continued walking along the edge of the woods until there it was. It was a Christmas tree standing just on the edge of the woods. It wasn’t real big, but it would be just right for our living room back home.
In spite of the cold, the snow, and the wind Daddy worked at cutting the tree down. Finally he was finished and we dragged it back across the field, down through the woods, across the stream, and back up the hill to the back patio. I tried to help but he really did all of the work. He trimmed off some of the bottom branches and we took it around to the front door and into the living room. That was probably the prettiest tree we ever had for Christmas.
I often wondered how Daddy knew that tree was there and why he chose to go through all of that for that particular tree. You see, just across the road from where we lived, there was a whole forest of Christmas trees. It would have been so much easier to have walked across the road and cut down one of those trees. Of course there was a whole lot more adventure in going across the stream, through the woods, up the hill, across the field through all that snow and I will never forget it. It was beautiful and a bit frightening too. Thank you, Daddy, for the great memories of those Christmas trees.
