CHAPTER 19
Easter falls on Sunday, so my dad was home. He was usually home on major holidays anyway. He was home on Thanksgivings for the
four-day weekend, something I was not thankful for. On Thanksgiving we would go to my grandparents after lunch for the big feast of a dinner. My grandmother went all out. The centerpiece would be a great golden turkey with her homemade bread stuffing. Her recipe for that stuffing went to the grave with her. There was so much food on Thanksgiving, mashed potatoes and gravy, candied yams with cherries and marshmallows, cranberry sauce, green beans, macaroni and cheese,
Cole slaw, pickles and olives. I never had room on my plate for everything at once. She usually baked pumpkin and mincemeat pies; I loved pumpkin, but disliked the mince.
This was a meal repeated on Christmas.
On Easter we also went to grandmother’s for dinner in the afternoon. No one went to church, even on those high Holy days. The meal was lavish enough, but the meat was usually ham, which I wouldn’t eat. There was enough other food on the table for me. I was full of candy by dinnertime anyway.
On Easter morning I woke early. I didn’t allow my parents to sleep late on Christmas and Easter. We came downstairs and before any breakfast, other than coffee for my father, which he salted Navy style, I searched the house for those dyed eggs from the night before. Mother hid them hither and yon throughout the house. She counted the eggs in my basket. One did not want to find an overlooked egg come the heat of July.
I saw what the Easter Bunny left, but wasn’t allowed to touch until
after our egg hunt and breakfast. I generally received a large woven basket of jellybeans, coconut crème eggs and yellow marshmallow peeps. There was also a large chocolate rabbit and maybe a giant crème egg as well.
Seven years of age may strike some as old for such a belief. I believed the myths of the Bunny and Santa Clause much longer than I suppose modern children do. Perhaps this was due to my isolation from other children who might know and tell me the truth or maybe it was just more innocent times with less public media to spoil the magic of childhood.
It probably helped that someone in a giant bunny costume didn’t come to the department stores in those day as Santa Claus did. (Photo left is my son about four years old with an Easter Bunny impersonator.) Kris Kringle was human looking after all. A fat man in a red suit with long white whiskers was certainly plausible to see. A giant rabbit was a bit different. If such a beast didn’t frighten a child, it certainly stretched even a kid’s credulity.
Anyway, I had eyewitness proof such beings existed.
March of 1948 had been fairly mild in the Philadelphia region.
Temperatures averaged in the mid-sixties during the last half of the month, even having a one-day high of 84. There was a lot of light rain, drizzle and fog. Still, on the morning of the 28th there was a light snowfall and some snow lay in the shade near the house when I went outside after breakfast. As I walked about the house I saw the tracks.
There were rabbit tracks in the dusting of snow and in the mud of the drizzle. They came across the yard from the back garden. Snowball was still in the hutch, so it had to be a wild rabbit or…
I followed the tracks and they curved along the side of the house right up to below the dining room window. They went from there down to the lane. It must have been the Easter Bunny, I thought. He entered through this window and left my basket of goodies on the dining room table. How a rabbit of normal size could have carried these large objects or reached the window never crossed my mind. I simply accepted this was the foot prints of The Easter Bunny.
It was on one of the Christmases at the Swamp House that I got my eyewitness, well, ear-witness anyway) evidence that Santa existed. I
think it was the second Christmas just before we moved again. I lay in bed awake on Christmas Eve, unable to sleep as usual, too full of expectation and excitement. It grew late and then I heard it, a whoosh, like a strong wind, circle the house and something thud on the roof over my head. Santa and his sled had arrived. I shut my eyes and pretended sleep.
To this day I don’t know what I heard that Christmas Eve, a sudden and single wind puff that blew a branch upon our roof perhaps? It sounded just as Santa’s sleigh should sound and confirmed my trust in Jolly Ol’ Saint Nick, at least for a while longer.
But eventually these things inspired stories:
I was listening for Santa Claus, but daddy was loud. He was stomping up the stairs.
“Harry, don’t,” said mom. “Not now.”
“Why not? Now’s as good as ever.”
I thought I heard something outside before daddy opened my door, but I don’t know because daddy was talking at the same time and afterward all I heard was mom crying.
Mom turned the colored lights off and the snow outside disappeared in the dark. I shut my eyes and dreamt of snakes. When I woke I decided snakes went south for the winter with the birds.
When I came downstairs Uncle Les and my mom were waiting for me, but dad was gone. Then I thought, it’s Christmas, and I got my wish, so why was I crying.
Written in 1963
In my collection:Tales Out of Wilmillar & Other Villages
As much as I loved Christmas, all my Christmas stories were sad, except one, “Home for Christmas” 1965. It was a farce and it got published many years later.
“How did that happen?” Daddy asked Bud, who couldn’t seem to answer. He muttered something, but the foil muffled his voice. I don’t think it was an answer, though. I think he said something it was best daddy couldn’t hear.
“How did this happen?” daddy asked again.
“You know how clumsy Bud is,” I said.
Bud was bouncing up and down violently, making sounds and waving his tangled hands as best he could. Apparently he was hinting to be set free. Daddy grabbed the ribbon and attempted to break it. Nothing happened except the ribbon tightened about Bud’s neck and he bounced up and down more violently than before.
Daddy tried twisting the ribbon, to pull it loose, to turn it and to bite it, until he was red in the face. Now both daddy and Bud sat on the floor gasping for breath.
I lost interest in their struggle returning to my own problem with the stamps, but I did make a suggestion. “Daddy, why don’t you cut it?”
“Right. Good idea, Jill Ann Do you have scissors in the desk?”
“I have half a scissor,” I told him.
Daddy stared at me. “Half? How can you have half a scissors?”
I shrugged. I’m not very mechanical and don’t understand the working of tools very well. “I don’t know,” I said. “They fell apart last week. I’ve been using one half for a nail file and the other for a letter opener.”
Bud had chewed through the foil by this time and could be heard. “Hurry, dad, hurry,” he screamed. “Hurry before somebody mails me.”
Daddy rolled his eyes. “Okay, Bud, keep calm. I’ll get a knife and have you free in a wink.
Mom met daddy as he was going into the kitchen. Grandmother, who wore an oversized apron upon which she was wiping her hands, followed her.
“Where are you going?” asked mom.
“To get a knife.”
“What for?”
“Your son wrapped himself,” he said and went his way.
“Well as long as he’s behaving,” said grandmother. She never sees anything but the good side. “A boy should behave, especially near Christmas.”
Excerpt from “Home for Christmas” (1965)
Published in:“Funny Bunny Fridays” No. 6
The Purple Treehouse
January 2012
In my collection First Quarter Tales 1965
I will tell you how I lost my belief in Santa, even though it didn’t happen until we moved back to
Downingtown and into 417 Washington Avenue (pictured right). I must have been 10 years old by then. Denny Myers would tease me for believing in Santa. “It’s just your parents, you know,” but I didn’t believe him. Town kids were always trying to bring me down in those days and Denny, once a friend, was one of the leaders in teasing and bullying me.
It was getting near the big day and Iva Darlington (pictured left with Judy Baldwin on her left, 1952) and I were playing. No one was home at my house. Dad was on the road and mother was working again at the Five ‘n’ Dime. Iva and I went into my house for a while. We began to snoop. I don’t know if it was her idea or mine. We were trying to find what my parents got me for Christmas. Normally I got clothes with perhaps a small toy or two from them, but we snooped anyway.
In the back of the closet in the spare bedroom we found a cache of
toys, the very things I wanted for Christmas. Oh, I was ecstatic. I was going to have quite a haul this Christmas, what with the toys Santa brought and all these from my parents as well. I could hardy wait. On the right is that spare bedroom, with Peppy on the bed and Chessie and the two kitten picture on the wall.
On Christmas morning I dashed downstairs and there about the tree were the toys Santa had left in unwrapped display. The same toys Iva and I had seen in the closet. I got the usual clothes from my parents and although I never let on to them, I now knew the truth. Another illusion on childhood was gone.
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