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What's New? Christmas Stories: Eddie's | Nikki'sThis is where we gather to tell the stories of our youth and the and the colorful characters who inhabited it. I hope everyone sends a story. It can be about anything or anyone, long, short, funny or sad. There's a little bit of storyteller in all of us I know, so please send me your story via e-mail.
Just click on the name below to read that person's story.
Nikki | Shela | Paula | Brenda |Maria | Kathy | Amber | Brandi | Danny | Sean | Eddie
It
was late December 1980, a few days before Christmas and Mom(Paula), Dan,
Bran, and me (Eddie), were driving down to Florida from Maryland to spend
X-mas with Aunt Rose & Aunt Josephine and the rest of the gang in
Florida.
On the way down we stopped in South Carolina to spend a couple of days with Grandpop & Grandmom Sue. Grandpop, if I remember correctly, hadn't had the El Rancho for all that long.
Anyway, Mom and I took turns driving because we were the only ones that could. Anyone who has ever driven a long stretch down I-95 knows what a pain in the a*# that can be at the best of times, but when you add X-mas traffic into the mix it gets about 3 times as bad. So, needless to say, by the time we got to S. Carolina we were tired and certainly had enough hassles for the day not to mention nearly getting road rammed by maniac truckers and almost running out of gas!
Well, Grandpop wanted us to meet him at the El Rancho, because it was easier to find as we had never been to his and Grandmom Sue's house which was most definitely out in the country. His directions to the bar were good and we got there with no problem about 4 p.m., I remember it was still light out for that time of the season. All of us were totally exhausted, Mom was the most because she had done the majority of the driving, and we had been on the road since 5 a.m. or so.
We went into the bar and Grandpop showed us around and we had pizza, and Grandpop gave me and Dan a couple beers. Anyway, and this was so long ago, I remember Grandpop had to run a quick errand or something and he wanted to borrow Mom's car. Grandmom Sue was at their house and was going to come a little later in the evening with their car to close down the bar while Grandpop rode with us to show us how to get to their place. That was the plan! Well, we should've known better after the day we had that would be expecting a little to much!
Grandpop
went and ran his errand, he was gone about 30-45 minutes and he left us
in charge of the bar. We got a kick out of that but to be honest it was
early Saturday evening and we were the only ones there, so I think he
felt comfortable leaving us in charge. When he got back we played a little
more pool, and then Grandmom Sue came to take over and close up the bar.
It was the first time we met her, and I can remember how warm and friendly
she was. She took some time with us, and I remember her telling us where
all the snacks and goodies and things like that were in the kitchen and
where to find the bath towels and things like that. I remember asking
her why Grandpop didn't show us, and I recall her saying something like
"Oh, he will if you need help, but he'll probably be in front of
the t.v". I remember my Grandpop loved a good bet (which I didn't
know much about at the time until he explained it to me later so simply
anyone could of understood!), and he loved football, which I did as well,
so that was great!
So we all walked outside, and Grandpop went to the drivers side because Mom was tired, and I had a few beers in me. I distinctly remember him saying to Mom, "Paula, let me have the keys back."
I remember Mom looking at him like he had 3 eyes or something, and she said, "What are you talking about?? You never gave them back to me when you came back!"
They just kind of looked at each other, and Dan and I started cracking up laughing. So Grandpop checked all his pockets and then we all went back into the bar to look for them. Grandpop did everything except turn the place upside down but no luck whatsoever. Then, he went outside and searched all around the car and pretty much all of the parking lot without finding them. We all checked our pockets, Mom totally emptied her purse and still they wouldn't turn up! I could tell Mom was fighting a losing battle with her patience but didn't want to lose it in front of all of us; and I could tell Grandpop was noticing it too, but I remember he had this incredibly funny look on his face that said "Why is this happening to me?"
Dan and I were still trying not to laugh but we lost it completely when Mom said, "How the hell did you lose them from the parking lot to the bar!?"
Grandpop just shook his head and couldn't answer, and to be honest, I don't think any of us could. So Grandmom Sue came up with the suggestion of closing the bar down, taking us all to their house in her car, and then coming back because luckily no customers had arrived yet. Mom agreed to this and said something like, "We'll probably need a crowbar or a stick of dynamite to get the trunk open".
So
we all piled into Grandpop's car and off we went. He was right about where
they lived. We would have probably ended up in Georgia if we had tried
to find it ourselves, as this was real "Andy Griffith" territory,
but I remember how much I liked how quiet and peaceful it was.
Mom and Bran soon went to bed and Dan and I stayed up and watched football with Grandpop, and I remember he was happy because a couple teams he bet on had won. I think he felt a little bad about the keys, but that cheered him up.
I remember saying to him, "How are we going to get into our car?"
He just calmly said, "Don't worry, I'll have it straightened out by the time you wake up in the morning."
And sure enough, he was as good as his word. First thing the following morning, he called up a locksmith to come out to the bar to fit a new key, and by the time we all woke up it was ready to go! I recall Mom being very relieved, and she had a good laugh about it, and at breakfast we sat around the table and could not think of anywhere those keys could have ended up!
When we went
back to get the car, Grandpop, Dan, and I took another good look, but
where they went is a mystery to this day!!
egb:12/20/01
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When my sisters and I were little kids living on Juniata Street, Christmas was one of the happiest times of the year, and it was so exciting! We didn't have a lot of money back in those days so there weren't a lot of presents. What I remember most is coming down the stairs on Christmas morning, and seeing that tree! Oh it was so beautiful! Lights, pretty bulbs, and always angel hair. One year, my sister Jo Ann made tears well up in Daddy's eyes when she came down the stairs, saw that tree and exclaimed in childlike wonder, "I wish every day could be Christmas!" He recalled that moment often through the years, and it always brought a tear to his eye when he told that story. In fact, the tree was part of our present, too. We never saw it and it never went up until we were all fast asleep on Christmas Eve. It was just another present for us from Santa. And in our house we never, ever left milk and cookies for Santa Claus. I didn't even know about leaving milk and cookies for him. In our house, Santa must have been Italian because we left him pepperoni and cheese instead! It was quite a ritual my parents went through on Christmas Eve.
It began every year in December when my mom would take the only thing she owned of any monetary value, her platinum diamond ring, downtown to Bill Dietz's Finance Company. Every year she'd use that ring as collateral and borrow about $300 to buy all of us a few presents and some extra treats for Christmas Day. Since it was winter, work was hard to come by for my father who at that time found work as a painter wherever he could, sometimes even painting bridges along the east coast. He was quick and agile and climbed ladders and bridges like a squirrel. He did whatever it took to feed and shelter his family. He hunted for our food in the winter, and our freezer was full of deer meat, squirrel and rabbit and duck. My mother would cook the squirrel or rabbit in a wine sauce that was so delicious, I can almost taste it now. Or, if worse came to worse, he'd rustle a cow or two for the winter. And, the story I'm about to tell you, is the year he "rustled up" our most beautiful tree. This was the year he cut down a Blue Spruce from somebody's private property somewhere in or on the outskirts of our town. Only he knows the answer to that. Like I said, he did what he had to do. He was a good provider, my father. This tree was the most beautiful tree we ever had. It was perfectly shaped, and when my mother put all the decorations on it, it was absolutely spectacular!
This particular Christmas memory is etched deep in my heart and mind. After we set out the little plate of pepperoni and cheese, they sent all of us up to bed. I was quite upset that we didn't have a chimney for Santa to climb down.
"How will he get in, Mommy? We don't have a chimney? How will he get in?"
She looked down at me and smiled. Then she walked to the front door and opened it just a crack. She said, "He'll jump out of the sleigh, and off the roof, and walk right in our front door, baby. Now don't worry, go to bed now." They had much to do.
Shela and I were the youngest, still in single digit years, and so excited we could not get to sleep. We lay side by side in the bed in our long, insulated underwear, the quilted kind with snaps up the front of the shirt, nose to nose, snuggling to keep warm because there was no heat upstairs, and giggling and talking about Santa coming and what kind of tree he would give us, and what kind of toys he would bring us, and wondering aloud if he would leave candy in our stocking. The anticipation was almost too much to bear, my chest felt as if it would burst! Occasionally we'd hear my mother's voice call up the stairs for us to settle down and go to sleep. We'd just hunker down under the covers and giggle some more. It was getting very, very late.
"Ssshh!" Shela said, "Hear that?"
"What? What?" I whispered.
"Be quiet and listen....there it is!...ssshh..Listen!"
And then I heard it.....Jingle, jingle, jingle. Jingle, jingle, jingle.
"The sleigh bells! The sleigh bells!" I whispered excitedly.
We raised up out of bed and looked out the window which was covered on the inside with icy frost. We couldn't see anything. We rubbed the window pane with our sleeves. Still nothing. The street light from the alley illuminated just a small portion of our back yard. All I could see was the top of the walnut tree, it's bare branches swaying in the cold December night air.
"Sshh! We better be quiet and go to sleep, or else he won't come in." Shela said to me.
Eventually we drifted off, and sometime in the wee morning hours Shela shook me awake.
"Nik, Wake up! Wake up! Let's go see if he came yet. Be really, really quiet. Don't wake Mommy and Daddy up!"
So off we went, tip-toeing in our stocking feet, down the hallway to the top of the stairs, quiet as little mice. We held onto the bannister and very, very quietly, one step at a time, we made it halfway down the steps. We saw Mommy and Daddy asleep on the couch in the sitting room. Shela put her finger to her lips, motioning me to keep quiet. We stooped and peered through the slats of the bannister, into the living room, and there it was. That magnificent tree! Standing tall and majestic, twinkling under the angel hair, the star on top, and all the colorful packages underneath!
And then something awful happened very fast. One of us accidentally stepped on a Chinese Checkers game that was left on the stairstep. A game that we should have taken up to our bedroom and put away hours ago. Well, when that game flipped over, and those marbles started rolling down that wooden staircase, it sounded like a machine gun going off! Rat-a-ta-tat-tat!...Rat-a-ta-tat-tat! The marbles wouldn't stop! The noise was so loud! I never saw a man jump straight up out of a sound sleep like Daddy did that night! Like a bat out of hell he jumped off that couch, and stood there in his rumpled, brown trousers and white tee shirt, startled, in utter alarm and confusion.
"Gee-awd Damn!" "What the hell was that?" he yelled out, his eyes as wide as saucers, his hair sticking straight up.
Petrified we'd be in trouble for such a stunt, we turned to run back upstairs and by the time he looked up to the staircase, all he saw were four little feet taking the steps two at a time. Needless to say, we jumped in the bed, and covered our mouths to keep from laughing out loud at the sight of Daddy scared out of a sound sleep. We pulled the covers over our head and snuggled close to get warm, and didn't get out of that bed again till dawn. We drifted off again, we were happy though, because we managed to get a glimpse of that magnificent tree, and, oh, it was glorious!
Shela and I still laugh about it every year. And we know that the jingle jingle jingle sounds that we heard was our Dad, standing out on the back porch, shaking the bells, right under our bedroom window. And we know he would have been smiling all the while, because he knew we were up there listening, waiting for Santa's sleigh. He was doing it on purpose. He was doing what had to be done. He was making magic and memories for his children. He was a good man, my father.
Buon
Natale! Merry Christmas everyone!
12/15/01
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My
sisters and I have been lucky to have had Daddy in our lives for so many
years. My cousins, Maria and Kathy weren't so lucky in that respect. Their
fathers died when they were very young. I never met Kathy's dad, Uncle
Eddie, he died before I was born but really wish I had some memories of
him. He was always my father's favorite brother and my dad spoke of him
with great affection. I do remember Maria's dad, Uncle Pete, though. Maria
and I are 4 months apart in age, so we spent a lot of time together as
children. Uncle Pete was the favorite of all the nieces. He used to make
pancakes for me and Maria, and I can still see his Languis eyes twinkling
when he flipped the pancakes up in the air. He had our complete attention
and he loved to make us laugh. I remember another time when we wanted
him to play with us, but he fell asleep on the couch. So we hatched another
plan and waited for him to start snoring, then we used Aunt Tillie's lipstick
to paint his face like an Indian. 
In
retrospect, I know he could have never slept through all that....he was
just pretending, and it was all for our delight! Uncle Pete died when
I was six. It was early in the morning, and he was getting ready to take
Maria and Aunt Tillie to Rehoboth Beach for the weekend. He had a stroke
and fell onto Maria's bed. That's how she woke up that day. He died in
her arms, and it forever colored the rest of her life.
After some time, I suppose Aunt Tillie sort of took his place with all of us. She became the "favorite" of all the nieces. She always let us hang out at her house and play our music loud. She would dance and laugh with us. She'd let us sneak cigarettes, drive her car and she always had something good to eat. She never passed judgment on us and loved us unconditionally. She took us to the drive-in movies more times than I can remember. Many a weekend night we would pile into the car that Uncle Pete left her to raid the corn fields and the apple orchards. Aunt Tillie never learned to drive so usually one of my sisters was behind the wheel. The fact that no one was old enough to drive didn't really matter back then. I think we did this on a regular weekend basis.
A memory comes to mind of Maria and me sitting in the back of my grandmother's store drinking a coke in a little bottle. Our Aunt Rose used to lose her reading glasses all the time. Back in those days, she was usually three sheets to the wind or on her way there, singing "Lucky Lindy" or talking to herself, calling somebody a "dirty Polack." She was so funny to us when she drank. She'd always ask us if we saw her glasses. "No, Aunt Rose, we haven't seen them" we'd say. All the while they were on the top of her head! I don't know how we managed to keep a straight face, but we always did. We'd sooner have Coca-Cola running through our nose than spoil the fun we had watching her look for them.
There were
some scary stories for me too. Like the time Aunt Josephine, who was a
brilliant, educated woman, but also a paranoid schizophrenic, was home
from the hospital. It was a rainy day and our mothers let Maria and me
stay home from school. They were both at work that day at the Howard Johnson's
on Route 40, so we were left in our grandmother's care. We were only in
first grade at the time. We were up in the attic above Mom-Mom's store,
playing house and dress-up with all the old treasures that were stored
away up there. We were well into our imaginary tea party, with our hats
and necklaces on, our lips painted red, pinkies extended and crocheted
shawls draped over our shoulders when we heard the footsteps. Terror struck
us. Instinctively, we knew who it was, and we knew were in a bad situation.
Aunt Josephine would not tolerate any of us kids missing school for any
reason whatsoever. It was probably why we got to play in the attic that
day. After all, we would be out of her sight. Maybe we were talking or
laughing too loud or stomping around making noise, I don't know, but somehow
she knew we were up there. She came up those stairs, her eyes wild, her
nostrils flared, and she was carrying a switch, and she was using that
loud, scary voice telling us that we should be in school and that she
was going to teach us a lesson. We started crying and told her we had
permission to stay home from school that day. She didn't care, she was
still going to teach us that lesson. We yelled for Mom-Mom or Aunt Rose
to help us but they didn't hear our cries. It all happened so fast, she
grabbed for us, I looked at Maria who was white with fright and frozen
in place. I wriggled away and ran screaming and crying down those stairs
as fast as my little legs would carry me. Maria was not so lucky. But...that's
a different story best left for another time. And perhaps, Maria should
tell it.
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of Page
Memories
come in soft whispers, sometimes when I’m about to fall asleep, other
times when I’m working or driving in the car. With these small flashes
of sight come the smells and textures of past lives when we were children
without a care.
I see myself sitting on Giant Rock under the bridge, a place where we would go to be alone and make up stories and later on, in my teens, to smoke cigarettes and use curse words, a place where no one could see or hear us trying on our gown-up skins. My friend Francine and I used to go there quite often, or we'd go to the little place behind her house that used to be a waterfall but was mostly just a dried up little stream. We’d sit on the edge and dangle our feet and play silly little girl games or sing songs. Seenie, a colored girl (politically correct would be black today but back then it was colored), lived nearby that dried up stream.
We were all thirteen that summer and thought we were pretty grown up. At least Francine and I thought we were. Seenie knew she was grown up, she grew up earlier in the year when some white boys from the neighborhood raped her. Francine and I watched as Seenie’s belly grew that summer, we were embarrassed for her and pretended not to notice that she was going to have a baby. We pretended all summer not to notice and then one day she was gone. I never saw her again and don’t think Francine did either. Finally, Francine and I talked about it. We both knew who the boys were. Two of them were brothers and lived in our neighborhood. There were four Mom & Pop stores and three neighborhood bars on three blocks. The two brothers who raped Seenie lived on that block and their parents owned one of those grocery stores. The police were called but the charges against the boys (and I heard there were four of them altogether) were dropped for insufficient evidence. I guess Seenie’s word and the fact that they broke her arm and gave her a baby wasn’t good enough. In any case nothing was ever done about it, and Seenie went away to parts unknown to me.
Francine
and I got our first pair of high heel shoes that Christmas. Boy did we
think we were something! I can see us trying to go down the icy front
steps. There was snow on the ground and the air was bitter cold. Francine
had her father drive her the two blocks to my house because we wanted
to wear our high heels together for the first time. They were black with
six little straps up the front, we picked them out together from the Sears
Catalogue. So there we were, holding on to the front porch railing for
dear life, ice crunching under our feet and each of us laughing our heads
off trying to act like we were Queens of the May! We made it down the
front steps all right but walking down the icy pavement was another story
all together. Slipping and sliding all the way, our mothers watching us
out the window and laughing as we held on to each other trying to make
it back to the house without falling.
There were three of us who were inseparable, Francine, Franny and me. Franny was a boy. Oh, what we didn’t do to him! He was our guinea pig. We tried everything out on Franny first. We were into cooking, Francine and I. We made concoctions of vinegar, mustard, corn meal, hot sauce, eggs, anything we could find, and tell Franny he had to eat it. He always would and I often wonder why. It must have tasted awful! I guess he figured if he was going to hang out with girls he had to do what we wanted. The real secret is I was always in love with Franny. I think I loved him when we were three years old. He was the first kid I ever knew who came from a broken home. I never met his father, but he was the uncle of the boys who raped Seenie. Once when Franny and I were about four or five his Uncle Chick caught us playing doctor! We didn’t know what we were doing but Franny sure got a spanking and I was sent home in a big hurry. Much later in life we had a big laugh over it though. I miss him to this day.
Franny and his family moved from house to house when he was young, so sometimes we lost track of each other. I remember hearing my mother and some of her friends talk about Franny’s mother. They said she was a "putana", but I didn’t know what that meant then. I just thought they didn’t like her because she was divorced. Now I know that whatever she did she did it because she was trying to feed her family. She had five children by five different men they said. In those days, and this would be about forty years ago, women didn’t get divorced so often. It was a rarity. Getting divorced in my neighborhood automatically made you a bad woman. The man wasn’t labeled that way, just the woman. Who cared if any of that was true about the men Franny's mother had, she was divorced so she must be bad.
It’s
funny, I look back on it now, and I am older than they were at the time,
and I remember and sometimes try to forget all I went through. They weren’t
so bad these people I grew up around. They were just trying to get by.
Like we all are. Except for those boys who raped Seenie. I heard one of
them died. Good riddance to bad rubbish I say.
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My
brother, Sean, and I were so excited! We were going to visit Pop-Pop and
his new wife, Sue, for the summer. Pop-Pop usually came to Florida a few
times a year to visit us, but we always had to share him with everyone
else in the family. We loved him so much, and we were so happy to have
him all to ourselves for the whole summer.
I remember when we first arrived in Dalzell, South Carolina. I don't think my brother or I had ever really been in the country before. Not like this anyway. It was amazing to us to be out in the middle of nowhere. Nothing but cornfields and cottonfields and long, narrow, winding roads. Sean loved it. He was almost nine years old that summer and felt especially wild and free. Pop-Pop gave Sean his first BB gun that summer, and he spent his afternoons on the hunt. Much to my horror, he was particularly interested in decreasing the humming bird population, and that was the cause of many arguments between us that summer in South Carolina.
I
spent my days getting to know Sue. We had so much fun, even doing simple
things like going to the grocery store. She always made me laugh. In the
evenings, we would go down to Pop-Pop's bar at The El Rancho. He tried
to teach me to play pool and he let me work behind the counter sometimes.
He would give me quarters to put in the juke box, and I would continuously
play the song "The Devil Went Down to Georgia", and sometimes Pop-Pop
would play a slow song and try to teach me to waltz. He would say "Amber,
the man always leads." I guess that rule never sunk in because now I still
try to lead and step on toes. I don't mind, though. I actually like it
because everytime I begin to slow dance, Pop-Pop's words still echo in
my head, and I giggle to myself and continue toe crunching. Maybe I do
it on purpose now, just for the memory. I think my Pop-Pop was proud of
me, even if I did try to lead, because he never quit trying to teach me,
and he always smiled at me when I dragged him around on the dance floor.
He called me "Hotshot", a name I loved, even if he did call everyone else
that, too.
Pop-Pop took
us fishing and we caught hundreds of
brim. I remember how exciting it was, and I also remember how disgusting
it was when he made us clean and scale them. Sean was in hog heaven though.
My brother has since grown up to be an avid fisherman and hunter, and
a he's also a great story-teller. I think my grandfather had something
to do with that. He was such a positive influence on both of us.
One Sunday
we had a fish fry at the El Rancho, and what great fun that was! Everyone
was eating, and drinking, and dancing, and laughing. We were all so happy.
And now, when I think of my grandfather, this is how I remember him --
always smiling and laughing, teasing me and calling me "Hotshot", stuffing
money down my shirt pocket and teaching me to do fun things and to enjoy
life in the moment. I love him, and I'm so happy to have that wonderful
summer locked away in my heart forever.
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