Anyone that grew up on the high plains of West Texas will remember the colors of Christmas: tan, yellow, brown and bright blue skies. The wind was always blowing, and it was usually very cold or quite warm.
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| View across the county road from October to January: cotton modules |
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| If we were very lucky, we avoided this at Christmas |
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| Magical winter neighborhood scenery |
We were visiting my suegra (mother in law), and I was out on an errand on Christmas day. I heard the craziest story from a couple of radio personalities.
One of the guys was talking about Christmas day in the 1930's when he was a little guy. He and his brother woke up at the butt crack of dawn. it was really cold in the clapboard house and still dark. They ran into the front room and looked under the Christmas stick tree. There were two presents. They couldn't wait, so they ripped them open. He got a pack of fire crackers, and his brother got a rubber kick ball. He said he went to the kitchen and got some matches, and they both went out the front door in a run. He lit the firecrackers and they were crazy loud. It scared his brother and he took off running and tripped on something. He fell on the ball and it popped. Christmas day wasn't even 10 minutes old and they had shot off and broken everything. He remembered being pretty glum the rest of the day.
My dad told me few stories of his youth, but never a thing about a Christmas. I figured his were a lot like that radio guy's. Dad lived on a farm that looked really similar to this.
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| I saw a pic of my dad when he was a boy in a place just like this. No green at all, just dirt. |
Happy Christmas.
Wow STxAR. That last picture seems a little....bleak.
ReplyDeleteI saw a picture of my dad wearing overalls, barefoot in the dirt. There wasn't a piece of grass visible in the picture. No trees either. Just like that, dirt to the horizon. The 30's in western Oklahoma were hard.
DeleteHe told me he used to look at the stars as he was falling asleep, through the holes in the roof.
He woke up one morning after a blue norther came in. Yellow jacket wasps had crawled up all along his side under the quilts to keep warm. The one side was covered with them. He was really careful getting out of bed to keep from getting stung.
No stories about Christmas, though. Almost like they didn't celebrate it.
Bleak Christmases are just the worst
ReplyDeleteI've had two in a row, and this year looks to be the same. Sometimes, you have to strip off the dead branches for new growth. I feel a bit like the tree in Nebuchadnezzar's dream. It has been cut off, but banded tightly to keep out the rot. The new growth will be better than before. But right now, it's just a stump with a band of iron on it. Not much to look at.
DeleteThe bleakest I've endured by a far stretch was the one after mom passed. We could hardly go through the motions. It was grey. Dad was a hollow shell. We all were on the verge of tears the whole time. 1994 was the last Christmas we all spent together... It was so very painful.
Being alone isn't hard at all compared to '94. I remember the Christmases with mom and dad as a kid, as a young family man visiting. The Christmases with our kids as we developed our own traditions. And I pray for the folks I know and knew. I thank God for His amazing gift that made me a gentler man, and not the future convict I was probably heading for. It's become a simple and meaningful day.
I've been through some of those south plains dust storms. They are known for scouring paint off of vehicles and ruining (sandblasting) windshields.
ReplyDeleteBesides trying to talk without opening you mouth too much, I remember the static electricity that went along with them. Made everyone edgy. Hair sticking to the headliner, getting zapped trying to open a car door, or house door, even touching a faucet. It was constant irritation. And if you had chapstick or carmex on your lips, you were done for.
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