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solo1
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« on: November 05, 2017, 02:36:31 PM » |
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I'm proud to have been raised a Christian and Lutheran. I have many memories of strict but benevolent mentors. The memories are tied to my Faith in many cases.
Here is a story, ready or not.
Christmas Memories as a Kid and much later.
It was somewhere around 1936. We lived in Ft. Wayne on Grant Ave, mom, dad, and four sisters. Dad was working but he hadn't caught up with the results of the Great Depression. We had just started the furnace after ( to me), a lifetime of using a wood burning stove in the kitchen. No more blanket covering the doorway to the kitchen and freezing in the rest of the house.
It's the day of Christmas Eve and we had just had our Christmas meal as we were seated around the big table in the dining room. Dad had a surprise for me, his son, and he couldn't wait until Christmas Eve to give it to me. As a result he gave me this big box to open. He knew that I wanted a Lionel train set and I fully expected that this would be the day that I would get it.
I opened the box with shaky hands and found, not a Lionel train set but a Marx 'Commodore Vanderbuilt train set instead. It was much cheaper than the Lionel . I masked my disappointment as I knew, even at the tender age of 8 that dad couldn't afford a Lionel. We set up the train set on the dining room table and I ran it until it was time to disassemble it and put it away so that we could eat supper at the table. A wonderful Christmas.
Forward to another Christmas season. Mom and I rode streetcar number 4, Broadway, to downtown. It was a bitterly cold evening and snowing lightly. The wicker seats on the streetcar were wondrously heated by an electric heater under the seat and we were reluctant to leave the streetcar and enter the cold at the corner of Main and Calhoun Street known as the transfer corner. Nevertheless we did and walked the three blocks to Wolf and Dessauer to marvel at the animated Christmas displays starring WeeWillie WandD. We didn't do any shopping but we did walk another block to Morris's to get a hamburger and a delicious malted milk.. It was a nice evening culminating in riding number 4 streetcar back to Walnut Street, our home at that time.
Another Christmas found me participating in reciting the Christmas Story at Emmaus Lutheran church.
We had to memorize the Christmas Story and recite it to the audience (congregation). If we forgot our lines, we would hear it from the German teachers.
I was also in the 6th grade chorus and we sang Silent Night under the strict tutelage of Mr. Schmidt, our 6th grade teacher, and another one of German heritage. At the end of the service all of us kids walked behind the altar where we were given a small box with a string handle. In the box was a collection of hard candy. Just in case that we might've gotten the idea that our parochial school was going soft on us, we were also given one Faber yellow pencil to remind us, after all, we were still students and that we were here to learn and that eating candy was secondary to the Cause. Another cherished Christmas memory.
All of these memories and more came back to me when, years later, I was on guard duty in Korea. It was the winter after the Truce was signed, 1953. It was Christmas Eve and as I looked up at the night sky, no sound of any kind, no people, no trucks, no artillery, and the sky was pitch black unspoiled by any artificial light, A feeling of reverence came over me as I viewed the billions of stars in the black sky. The song Silent Night, Holy Night immediately came to my mind.
I shifted my slung M2 carbine to my other shoulder, looked around, and relaxed as a sense of Peace came over me. A very blessed Christmas that December of 1953 even though I wasn't home.
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