Visits to Santa

When I was very young, my mom would take me downtown to visit with Santa Claus. I always thought we were going to the real North Pole (which I called “the Near Pole”). Downtown Houston was an awe-inspiring place to a four year old. The buildings were so big and the streets were so busy! Very different from suburban Overbrook. Mama and I would head downtown, all wrapped up in our winter coats and park in one of the utterly fascinating parking garages. It was like climbing a mountain in your car: you drove up and up and up to find a parking spot. Then you rode an elevator back down to the street level.

The place she took me to see Santa was the luxurious Foley’s department store. Part of the journey included a trip out onto the chilly streets to walk by the Christmas displays in the store windows. Animated Christmas elves and reindeer would nod and blink from their artificial snowbound winter scenes. Peppermint candy cane fences and sparkly sugarplums abounded in these small vignettes. I was always quite enchanted with them, and it was worth the blast of icy cold wind howling down the concrete and steel canyon walls of Main street.

Once inside, we began the wonderful excursion up to the fourth floor of Foleys. We had to pass through rack after rack of beautiful clothes, exotic colors and fabrics of all kinds, all at eye level for a child. I can still remember the smells and excitement I would experience when we entered that store: dozens of shoppers pushing in off the streets, tightly bundled in woolen coats and sweaters, sometimes lightly dusted with sleet or ice, bringing in with them little bursts of cold, fresh air to mometarily dispel the heady cloud of fragrances that hung over the perfume and makeup counters.  There were loudspeaker announcements from the PA system heralding sales and specials, and above it all, Christmas music played enticingly, as seductive to a 4-year old as a siren’s song, luring us towards the holy grail of our quest—Santa Claus.

I held tightly to my mother’s hand as she wove us in and out of the crowds of shoppers and various departments until we arrived at the very center of the store and there before us rose the magic escalators. I loved the escalators. Better than the ferris wheel at the fair, better than the pony rides at the park, they were the best attraction at any department store when we went shopping. Imagine the wonder to a small child of being able to rise magically up, up, up above the crowds of shoppers below, becoming taller and taller than everyone else, just like Alice in Wonderland.

[In fact, I loved riding the escalators so much that my mother tells the story of one time when she “lost” me inside of Joske’s, another Houston department store. I was about four years old at the time. My mother was frantically searching the store for me, and then she glanced up and saw a big red bow just peeping over the top of the escalator rail going up and up. It was me, of course, barely big enough to hold onto the rail, but having a grand time riding the “magic carpet ride”!]

While part of the excitement of going to see Santa Claus was definitely wrapped up in the thrill of getting to ride the escalators non-stop straight up to the fourth floor, the real treat was the absolute conversion of a portion of that cavernous fourth floor into the North Pole. The staff at Foley’s really outdid themselves at Christmas time. An entire winter wonderland had been set up, complete with sidewalks and tunnels through artificial snowbanks that winked and shimmered with gaily colored lights and glistening diamond drop snowflakes. More animated characters—elves busily making toys in their workshops, oversized ballerina dolls and toy soldiers turning like marionettes, reindeer “grazing” on bales of hay—greeted us along our journey, promising the most wonderful delights to a four-year old child who fervently “believed”. Christmas tunes carried in the air and the excitement just built and built.

And finally, after winding our way through the entire wonderful maze, we approached the most wonderful sight of all: Santa Claus. Santa was always seated on his golden throne, as godlike as Zeus on Mt. Olympus. One of Santa helpers, a beautiful lady elf in a green velvet skirt and red tights would come to take your hand and lead to you sit in Santa’s lap.

When it was your turn, of course, you had to be very brave and actually leave your mother behind at the gate, but the lure of seeing Santa was a very powerful motivator. Sometimes the children would cry—if they didn’t like being separated from their mothers—and sometimes siblings would be taken up in pairs or trios—so their mom could just pay for one group photograph—but mostly we went up one by one.

Once on Santa’s lap, things moved very quickly. The lady elf retreated to a camera, the bulb flashed with a loud pop! and almost before you could recover from the spots in front of your eyes, Santa would ask what you wanted for Christmas in a very gruff voice. I always got stage fright at this point and could never remember my list. I remember being so shy! I wouldn’t cry, but I would sit on Santa’s lap and my mind would go blank. I couldn’t remember a single thing I had planned to tell Santa I wanted for Christmas. Fortunately my mom was always standing just a little ways off and she would prompt me from the sidelines:

“You wanted some dishes, and a Chatty Kathy, and record player, remember?”

Oh, yes, of course. With a great whoosh of relief, the words would come tumbling out. Santa would remind me to be a good girl, give me a little pat on the back and a lollipop from the big red velvet bag at his side, and down I would go. Duty done, I was free to tromp down the descending ramp and into the waiting and proud arms of my mother.

A few days later, my picture with Santa would arrive in the mail, and my mother would proudly display it as part of our overall Christmas decorations for that year.

Of course, once you had been to see Santa, the pressure to "be good for goodness' sake" was on.  Santa had your list, he knew what you wanted, and if you messed up between your visit and Christmas Eve, you knew what you would find on Christmas morning: nothing but lumps of coal in your stocking.  And somehow, even though I had known plenty of children to misbehave, I had never personally heard of anyone who failed to receive their presents from Santa, so he must have been a pretty forgiving fellow.

Christmas Trees and Christmas Lights

Thanksgiving weekend always heralded the official arrival of the Christmas season. There was always an unofficial contest among the neighbors to see who could get their outdoor Christmas lights up the fastest. If my dad hadn't gone hunting, we would string up our outside lights that weekend, and they would stay up until after New Year’s. I remember having the very strong belief that if we didn't have our Christmas lights up, then Santa Claus wouldn't be able to find our house on Christmas Eve!

The outdoor Christmas lights in the early 1960s were not the sophisticated, sparkly twinkle lights that we have now. They were huge old bulbs of green and red, and they got HOT to the touch! They also burned out quite frequently. Daddy would always string ours around the eaves of the house. I can remember him climbing up and down and up and down the ladder, moving it along as he strung the twisted black wires with the big empty sockets, stapling the strands in place with his big blue staple gun. Then would come the fun part!

We had a huge box full of bulbs from the previous year. I got to be his helper and hand them up to him, so therefore I got to establish the "pattern" for the lights each year. It might be green--red--blue--orange--white--yellow, or some variation thereof, but our lights were always multi-colored. Some of the neighbors used all red or all blue or all green lights, but we always used all the colors at our house.

I remember every evening the thrill of plugging in the lights and watching them glow brighter and brighter as darkness fell. You could see the red ones come on right away, even before it got dark. The blue ones were harder to see in the twilight. Thus the nightly ritual of walking around the house every evening after supper, looking for the bulbs that had burned out the night before and replacing them. Sometimes we would run out of a certain color and the pattern would have to be altered a bit, but it was great fun and something I loved to share with my dad.

Another fun tradition was to drive around different neighborhoods in the evenings and look at all the decorated houses with their pretty lights and the decorated trees in the windows. Oh, how I remember those beautiful old Christmas trees! In some ways, they were always the best part of Christmas because they were a tradition that children could fully participate in.

At our house we always had a real tree, a Douglass fir. We would go to the tree lot at Fed Mart’s to buy it. We always bought the biggest one we could find. It would be bound up in netting and the men at the tree lot would have to tie it on top of our car, running the ropes through the open side windows to secure it to the roof. We would drive slowly home with the tree dangling precariously off the rear and the front of the car roof.

When we got home, Daddy would tie it up in the garage. He would hang it by a rope from the rafters, cut the confining net away, and slowly its bound limbs would begin to stretch and fall out gracefully from the trunk. Daddy would trim away however much was necessary from the bottom to make it fit in our house. But then the best part happened! My mom would FLOCK the tree!

You don’t see many flocked Christmas trees anymore, but it was very popular in the 1960s. We always flocked our tree white, to look like snow, but I do remember you could buy flocking in pink or blue or other wild and psychedelic colors. What is flocking, you ask?

Well, as best I recall, it was some sort of white powder that my mom mixed with water in a tub and then it was attached to our vacuum cleaner hose (you had to have a vacuum that would blow OUT) and the whole soggy mess was sprayed onto the tree. I can remember my mom going round and round that tree, fighting with the extension cord and spraying that white goop everywhere. I’ll bet there’s still flocking on the ceiling of that garage to this day!

Anyway, after she had coated the whole tree to her satisfaction, it had to hang there and dry a bit, and then my dad would carry it into the house. Once we had all the lights and ornaments on it, it really was quite beautiful. Just imagine: snow covered boughs in muggy ol’ Houston, Texas. Oh, those real trees always smelled so good! Mama would let me help decorate it. We always put the tree lights on first (again, HOT!), and then the ornaments. Our living room had no carpeting, so there were always a few shattered ornaments, but Mama never fussed at me about it. It was such fun to help her decorate the tree.

At the bottom of our tree, after carefully filling the reservoir of the tree stand with plenty of water so the tree wouldn't dry out, she would wind yards of fluffy cotton batting around the tree stand and the trunk. Then came the sparkly white felt that looked like drifts of snow. And finally came the best part: our lighted Christmas village! Mama had a set of little cardboard houses that all had holes in the backs to allow you to insert a small light bulb through the opening. The little windows were made of yellow cellophane and glowed at night. But you had to be very careful that the hot bulb wasn't touching the window or it would melt! She would always allow me to help arrange our "village" around the base of the tree. There were even miniature pine trees and villagers to complete the set. At one point, she had cut a hole in in the white felt, and she would insert a little mirror underneath it, so that it looked like a frozen pond in the center of the village for skating.

We always sat our tree in front of the living room windows where it could be seen from the street. I always thought we had the prettiest (if a tad unrealistic) tree in the neighborhood.

Our next door neighbors always had a real tree, too, but they always bought a Scotch pine. It was short and squat and thick with sticky, prickly needles. But they ALWAYS completely covered their tree in icicles. Icicles were thin strips of aluminum foil. You could just toss them all over the tree willy-nilly, or you could carefully hang them strand by stand. However you did it, the effect was always the same. Garish. My mom didn’t believe in icicles and would never let us have any on our tree. I guess I can see her point: after she did all that work to flock the darn thing, she didn’t want to cover it up with aluminum foil!

And speaking of aluminum foil, there was another type of unrealistic Christmas tree in the 1960s. My cousins had one. It was a silver aluminum tree with a motorized base that turned it 'round and 'round. That tinsel tree would turn in its motorized base, and as it rotated, colored lights shown up from the bottom of the base and changed it from red to green to yellow to blue. Only in the 1960s! My cousins always hung little Styrofoam balls covered in colored thread as their Christmas ornaments, which did have the advantage of being non-breakable.

Once the outside lights and Christmas trees were finished, our humble little neighborhoods glowed like magical fairy lands. Even though I never experienced a white Christmas in Houston, Texas in all my years there, the Christmas spirit was definitely in the air--whether that air was cold and crisp or warm and muggy made no difference to a child. And after the thrill of our home decorating was done, the next big Christmas adventure loomed upon our horizons: a visit to Santa Claus!

Holidays--Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was a big family holiday for us. We always watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV in the mornings, had tons of food at noon, and, of course, spent the afternoon in a food-induced stupor watching college football on TV.

Every year, we celebrated Thanksgiving at Mommaw’s house. How she produced such big meals out of such a small kitchen is just a marvel to me. She had no food processor, no blender, no microwave oven, not even an electric can opener. All she had was a single oven range and her two hands. She had to have started cooking at 5:00 a.m. to have it all done by noon.

Each year she made the same menu. We had roasted turkey with a huge pan of cornbread dressing, and often there was also a ham. Every year there were candied yams, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, black eyed peas, green beans, gravy, cranberry sauce, and lots of butter and hot rolls. (Sometimes the rolls got a little black on the bottom and we had to peel that part off!) And there were always at least three kinds of pie (pumpkin, pecan, and either chocolate or coconut) and a big bowl of banana pudding for us kids for dessert.

When our whole family was gathered together, there were fifteen of us—too many to all eat at the kitchen table. So we children were relegated to eating in the living room on TV trays. TV trays are not much seen these days. They were simply a metal tray that snapped onto a folding metal stand. Mommaw always had seven or eight of them handy. Old, beat up and rickety, still they served the purpose of giving us kids a place to eat. And we loved being separated from the adults. It gave us some sense of independence, even though our mothers were really just a few feet away in the kitchen. We enjoyed the separation no doubt every bit as much as the adults did.

The usual order of events was this: the children would take their plates and make a circuit around the big kitchen table while the moms hovered strategically, dishing up spoonfuls of this and that onto their plates. We would then parade into the living room and carefully set our plates on our afore-chosen TV trays, which were free standing in the middle of the room. We would then wiggle our way onto our designated seats (Neal and Susie and I always got the couch, since we were the oldest), and the moms would push our TV trays up to our laps. Sometimes pillows and phone books would have to be brought out to adjust the height of the small fry and finally everyone would be settled.

Then Mommaw would say grace from the kitchen and dinner would begin. The eight adults would be seated at the big table in the kitchen and conversation would begin to flow. Every few minutes, a mom would appear in the living room asking who needed more rolls or iced tea, but for the most part we were expected to stay put behind our trays until the meal was over.

After we had eaten ourselves in to a stupor, the TV trays disappeared and the men folk took over the living room to collapse in front of the TV—unless they were going hunting, in which case they left right after the meal was over. Football was the name of the game on Thanksgiving afternoons. It was always college football, too: the Longhorns vs. the Aggies. This was made more interesting by the fact that my Uncle Wally was an Aggie and hated the Longhorns, so my dad and Uncle Bob always rooted for the Longhorns, just to be contrary. Since neither my dad nor uncle had been to college, it didn’t really matter to them, but what good is a football game without a little friendly rivalry, huh?

The women would, of course, still be in the kitchen, trying to clean up. There were no dishwashers back then, so all those dozens of dirty plates and bowls and glasses had to be washed and dried by hand. Not to mention the sticky, greasy pots and pans. Although I don’t ever remember being told to stay out of the kitchen (or the living room, for that matter), it was understood that you didn’t interrupt or bother the grown ups for anything less than a medical emergency immediately following Thanksgiving dinner.

If the weather was decent, we cousins would adjourn to the back yard to sit and rock on the porch swing and think up mischief. November in Houston is unpredictable and tricky. I can remember Thanksgivings where I wore short sleeved shirts or at the most a simple sweater and we would frolic outside in the Indian summer. Other times it would be cold, wet, and freezing, and we would be confined to the house for the afternoon.

My grandparents’ modest brick home had only 2 bedrooms. It was an unspoken rule that we didn’t play in my grandfather’s bedroom. In fact, I can hardly remember what it looked like, so seldom did I cross its threshold. No, our sanctuary was the front bedroom, which Mommaw always referred to as “Aunt Kay’s room” even long after my aunt had married and moved into a home of her own.

Seven children confined to one small bedroom for an entire afternoon is just a breeding ground for trouble. Squabbles inevitably broke out, and so gradually we were released from our confine into the rest of the house. Once the moms had finished in the kitchen we were usually welcomed back. Card games or dominos were popular choices around the old kitchen table. As the ball game played out, the men might migrate outdoors to stand around in the garage and smoke. The boys would often follow them and try to work up a little game of touch football.

Although you wouldn’t think it possible, we often ate another meal again that evening before we left for our individual homes. Since we didn’t have the convenience of a microwave, and the moms most definitely didn't want to wash any more dishes, we ate our food “cold”. Leftover ham and turkey and macaroni and cheese—all eaten cold and quite delicious. One of my favorite sandwiches during the holidays is one that my dad used to make: cold sliced turkey on white bread with real mayonnaise, topped with a scoop of cornbread dressing and a slice of jellied cranberry sauce, then mashed into a delicious savory wudge. Loaded with carbs, fat and calories, it's still the most delicious sandwich you can imagine and I still have one every year.

Immediately following our noonday dinner, the dads usually left to go hunting for the remainder of the holiday weekend, while the moms and cousins stayed at home. That didn't bother us though. We happily spent our time either shopping or getting ready for the biggest holiday of them all: Christmas!