Best Christmas Memory?

Seven siblings, Dad worked at a rock quarry and farmed to raise all that we ate for the most part and Mom raised us kids full-time. No indoor plumbing until I was eight, so times were tough, but I did not know it because that was the way it was with everyone in our area.

Best Christmas memories was coming down the old creaky steps and crossing the uneven hardwood floors to look under the Christmas tree. The smell of fresh fruit would hit me when I entered the room and for many years, I would smell that same smell. Our stocking (everyday socks) was under the tree and usually stuffed with bananas, apples, oranges and some kind of chocolate candy. Never got a lot of toys but what little we got was sure special. And Dad seemed to always be setting at the kitchen table beside the wood stove drinking coffee and Mom in the kitchen readying for cooking breakfast.

Funny how these small things like the smell of fruit or other things are etched in our memories. I think about this every year and the then simple life as I knew it.

I think my best Christmas morning memory would have to be the Christmas of 1978. I was always a Hot Wheels boy and I awoke to both the Thrill Drivers Corkscrew Set & Thundershift 500 Set. I still have them, and no less than 1000 Hot Wheels cars. Every birthday, Easter, & Christmas.......I received Hot Wheels from uncles, aunts, grandparents, and Mom & Dad. I think at one time I had 10 Bandit Trans Ams and probably more red '57 Chevys & orange trucks w/ black motorcycles than that.

Now that I'm 52 years old.......I wish I remembered more of the family & friends & food & times than I am able to. Kids don't ever think about anyone passing away someday.

Happy Holidays to us all.

Growing up we didn't have much but my Dad worked very hard to provide for us. Life got easier for them after I started high school.

Dad would go to the pawn shops at Fort Campbell and buy watches, guns, cameras, etc that he could take to a construction job and sell for a small profit. This was during the Vietnam War. One year ,when I was 10 or so, he bought me a used Marlin 22 semi rifle and a nearly new book, Call of the Wild. He had read it earlier himself. I wore both of them out until the book was trash and the Marlin was pitiful. I wish I still had both.

I miss my Dad.

Mom had an album if old country singers. We would listen to Roger Miller little toy trains, Buck Owens daddy looks a lot like Santa. Of course Elvis the album of Christmas music. My favorite Santa Claus is back in town.
Merry Christmas everyone!!!

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