Sunday, November 29, 2009

Oh, Christmas Tree

No, I do not have my Christmas Tree up and glowing - but when I do dishes I am forced (by Jennifer) to think of Christmas as she gave me some dish type detergent that smell like - are you ready? - "Iowa Pine". One does not exactly associate Iowa with the smell of pine trees so I cannot state that my dishwater smells exactly like Iowa Pine but it most certainly smells like pine.
Which all has brought back memories of the pine tree in our front yard - just to the right of the steps that led to the front porch - that pine was no more than 8-10 feet
tall and never grew more than 1/4 of an inch a year if even that. But it was our pine tree! Did we decorate it for Christmas? - no! Nobody decorated outside their homes.
"Us five kids" did have an annual contest as we headed down Grand Avenue to do our Christmas shopping downtown. Each of us was trying to be the first to spot a Christmas tree inside a home. If it was your year to sit by a car window you had a better chance, of course. No doubt there were many tense moments trying to determine who had really been the first to spy the give away lights.
Speaking of Christmas shopping, my Dad gave each of us sixty cents to buy the needed six Christmas presents in either Kreske's(now K-mart) or Woolworth's Dime store. This, of course, took several hours of sneaking around with the treasures we would later wrap as secretly as possible - with wrappings and ribbons on the diningroom table and one sister and three brothers trying to sneak peak.
It is rather hard to describe how exciting it all was.

1 comment:

Karen said...

Hmm...never heard any of this -- you could write a book, Mom, because your style makes me want to keep reading and reading! Thanks for painting such an interesting picture!