What a surprise this morning ….
What a surprise this morning to see all the snow that fell in the La Crosse area. I suppose some are itching to see some on the ground here. Too bad we can’t arrange snow to fall just in certain spots. Like not on the highway or sidewalks and maybe not bury my car so I really have to work at it so I can drive it.
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The Christmas season started with a bang today. I got my first Christmas card. Then this afternoon Red Higgins and Lisa Marie put on Christmas music entertainment for everyone in the main dining hall.
Everyone surely enjoyed it. I didn’t see anyone leaving early and aides were having problems trying to move some residents in wheelchairs out ahead of the rest.
December was always a busy month at our house. I don’t remember how many different kinds of cookies and bars Mom made, but it was a lot.
Then there was the time my three brothers were in the service and she baked and baked. But Harold and I were forbidden from eating until she had all the boxes filled for mailing. Then she had three sisters living in Chicago and nearby Indiana that had to have a sampling too. I’ll bet you are feeling sorry for me.
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We always opened our packages on Christmas Eve. Well, after the cows had been milked and we had gone to our church Christmas evening service, which was actually the children’s program, then Dad always helped open the envelopes and count the offering.
I guess one of the most unusual things to happen one year came when one of the kids accidentally said his part for the school program instead of his church program part. I guess you might say the fact his mother was the organist who sat upstairs saved his life. I suppose he did make amends as he is now a retired pastor living just east of St. Louis.
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Like everything else we needed, we had Christmas trees growing in one of our swamps. They weren’t the best, but if they were homegrown which made it so much better. I don’t know if it was the fault of our first stand not holding any water, or they just dried out. A couple days after Christmas the tree came down and there was a big trail of needles all the way outside.
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I can remember back to the days when we actually had real live candles on the tree. They only got lit a few times, the last being Christmas Eve. But the presents got piled underneath just the same. I told you about getting the cows milked and going to church and then coming home to open our gifts. First someone had to add wood to the stoves and finally we got to open the presents. This was no hurry up thing, always the boxes from my three aunts first. No cutting the string or tearing the paper. The string was carefully wound on a ball and if the paper still hadn’t been used it was saved to mail back packages next year.
I well remember Christmas 1940. Our Aunt Lily sent us a Christmas wreath. We didn’t get electricity until January 1941, but we at least had a wreath hanging in the window. The same wreath got used for years afterwards.
From the corner where you turned to come to our house, a good three-quarters of a mile away, it was sort of a beacon every Christmas after that.
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Nothing like real news on a gloomy Saturday morning. I was in the bathroom emptying my bag and thought I heard a siren. Well, it sure was, and more than one, two fire trucks, an ambulance and lots of squad cars. It wasn’t until the very end when I found out what happened. A milk truck went in the ditch and turned over. I’m guessing the roads were icy as the county trunks are still out there applying sand and de-icer.
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Nothing unusual this morning, but I did see the Oscar Mayer Weiner mobile drive by.
