MY MOST MEMORABLE CHRISTMAS

I also remember my first Christmas that I can remember! I had to be around four years of age, and my sister Jo was about two. Dad was working at any job he could find, and our country was trying to work its way out of the great depression. We were living in an apartment on Hemphill street in Ft. Worth and Dad was working at Pick-Wick grocery store. About all I remember about the store was its sign. It was a wooden man with a snowman figure. Both his arms worked up and down, in his hands were paddles and he had a red light for a nose. We had no Christmas tree, our presents were hid under a quilt on the back porch. When it was time for us to get our presents, Dad lifted the quilt, and that was the extent of our celebration. I think I got a tricycle and Joe got a doll, but one thing I didn’t feel was poor and deprived. It was just another day, only in this one we had some new toys.
Our most memorable Christmas was in 1982. Bettye, Stacy, Chris and I were involved in getting our new church off the ground. Christmas vacation could not start until Christmas eve. So, sometime after the Christmas eve services, we loaded all our luggage and Christmas presents into our compact Chevy and headed out to Fresno, California to spend Christmas and New Years with my parents. We planned on driving all night on Christmas eve and all day Christmas. We got as far as Llano, Texas, which was only forty or fifty miles from where we started when we lost the car‘s transmission. The car managed to cripple its way to the only motel in town and sure enough, they had a room. The next morning, the wrecker came and towed us home, there was five of us in the cab of the wrecker counting the driver. The house was dark and cold, we had turned everything off. There was no food in the cabinets, refrigerator, or freezer. Christmas dinner that day consisted of peanut butter sandwiches and sodas. We opened our Christmas gifts we had planned to open in California, and watched TV. Someone has said that problem like that, when everything goes wrong, is a bonding experience. I don’t know about that, but you ask any of our family members who were involved in that Christmas fiasco, which was their most memorable Christmas? They will say, “That Christmas in 1982 whenever thing went wrong!”
What was your most memorable Christmas?
Don in Georgetown