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The Crowe's Nest |
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One of my favorite Christmas stories is one that momma used to tell us kids. We ranked it right up there with “Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer” and “The Night Before Christmas”. And we never got tired of it. We called it the story about “The Golden Locket”. I guess the first time I remember hearing it was when I was in the 4th Grade. It was 1954. We were living in a basement apartment in Fort Oglethorpe, between the movie theater and the elementary school. And when I say “We”, I’m talking about me, momma and daddy; my brother Lee and my sisters, Carnella and Emenda; daddy’s brother, Uncle Robert, and his wife, Aunt Bonnie, and their three kids, Lamar, Wade and Jean – making 11 in all, living together in that old damp, three-bedroom basement that was subject to visits from rats and snakes, and floods that sometimes came up to the bedposts. Momma was the only one working, and had been the only one working just about that whole year. Daddy and Uncle Robert, for some reason, had not been able to find any work in that part of the country. Aunt Bonnie did the cooking and housecleaning and the taking care of us kids. As it got closer and closer to Christmas, there may have been a few worried looks exchanged between momma and Aunt Bonnie. And the grownups may have stayed up talking a little more than usual, rolling up cigarettes on a little apparatus put out by Bugler, playing Canasta and speaking in solemn, muffled tones about money problems. But, for us kids, the excitement was mounting and we were getting happier and happier, waiting for the day that Santa Claus would be paying us a visit. I may have been just a little bit more contented and pleased in sort of a smug way than anybody else because of some good fortune that had come my way. A few weeks before Christmas, Jimmy Hale, the son of the man who owned the building, had taken me as a guest to his church, up on a hill directly facing the front of the movie theater. They had a big Christmas tree inside with brightly wrapped presents piled up under it. I was permitted along with the rest to pick out a present. And what a wonderful present it turned out to be. I couldn’t have asked for anything better. I knew as soon as I opened it that all my problems were solved. It was a box of Life Savers, made to look like a book. But when it was opened, it was all Life Savers – five rolls on either side - all different flavors. I was going to be able to give everybody a present, a roll of Life Savers each. None of the other kids were in such a position. I felt kind of proud and self-important about it. I dug out a little hole in the yard under a clump of grass and hid it. I’d lift up the clump of grass every day and take out the box, admiring it all over again and thinking about which flavor I was going to give to whom. Momma, I knew, was going to get the best – the cherry flavored. And daddy was going to get the next best, which in my opinion was the lemon, - and so on, until I got down to the worst flavor of all – Winter Green. Aunt Bonnie was going to get that for slapping me in the face that summer. I don’t remember exactly, after all these years, what I did that caused her to slap me, but I’m sure it had something to do with me talking back in a smart tone and claiming that she was siding unfairly with her daughter, Jean, regarding some board game we were playing. So she had lashed out suddenly and given me a hard slap across the face. She was a real nervous sort of woman anyway. She would get so scared during thunder and lightning storms, that she would make all us kids gather around her while she prayed out loud for the Lord to protect us. Anyway, she had slapped me in the face, which no one had ever done to me before, and for a cause that I thought was totally unjust. I hated her the instant she did it, and I was a bad one in those days to carry a grudge. So, she was going to get the Winter Green. Maybe then she would know what I thought of her. But for the most part, I wasn’t thinking about paying Aunt Bonnie back, I was just happy and caught up in the Christmas spirit. One evening, on the day that the school had closed for the holidays, us kids snuck around the back of it and went through all the discarded Christmas trees that had been thrown out, looking for the very best one. We dragged it back across the street and into the basement, as proud as a bunch of wild Indians bringing home a fresh kill. Aunt Bonnie popped some popcorn and showed us how to string it together and decorate the tree with it, and we had the merriest time of any group of people in that town doing it. When we had finished, we all felt certain that it was the most beautiful tree that anybody ever had. The night before Christmas, momma and Aunt Bonnie, and all us kids settled our selves in the living room by the tree. Daddy and Uncle Robert had been gone all week doing some work in another city and they were not back. Aunt Bonnie was worried and fretful, but momma was satisfied that they would get back that very night. Not only would they get back in time, she said, but she had a good feeling that this was going to be a wonderful Christmas. That’s when she first told us the story of ‘The Golden Locket’, and the best Christmas that she ever had. Momma, I guess, could tell a story as good as anybody I ever heard. She’d just sort of tilt her head a little and gaze off into the distance, as if she were seeing something as clear as a picture. And before you knew it, you were seeing it too. “I was only 14-years-old, but big for my age,” she said. “And I had just started seeing your daddy. “Oh, he was the most handsome man I had ever seen, with brown eyes and dark hair. And he was wearing a suit and tie and a hat. He had tiny feet and was wearing the prettiest little shoes.” Momma and her mother, Granny Jolly, were attending a tent revival conducted by a black woman named Mother Ricks in Chattanooga, momma said. Daddy was sitting up on the platform, playing his guitar. Every once in a while she would sneak a glance at him and catch him sneaking a glance back at her, she said, adding that she would quickly look away. At one point during the service he came down and introduced himself to her and Granny Jolly, then sat down and started talking. He told them that he lived in Atlanta and hitchhiked to Chattanooga every weekend to attend church. After chatting with momma’s mother for a while, he asked her if he could buy momma an ice cream. “If it’s alright with Fanlee, it’s alright with me,” said Granny Jolly. Momma answered that she would like very much to have an ice cream. They had stands outside the tent where you could buy soft drinks and ice cream, and just about anything you wanted, momma said. “After I told him the flavor I would like, and the woman was dipping it out, he looked at me and asked if I was going to pay for it. I told him I didn’t have any money, and he laughed, and so did I.” Momma said she and Granny Jolly saw him several more times over the next several weeks. Any time there was a Holy Ghost revival, granny and momma would attend it, and that’s why they kept running into daddy, momma said. Momma heard from one of the church women that daddy was dating someone else and that several of the church girls were interested in him. But she gave him her address anyway when he asked for it. “And when I got Baptized, he was the first one to shake my hand when I came out of the water. He said, ‘Praise the Lord, Sister!’ “One day I got a post card from him asking me how old I was. I wrote and told him that I was 14. He sent me back a post card, saying that he thought I was 18,” momma said. “That’s how much older I looked than my age,” she added. Daddy was 23-years-old, but that didn’t bother momma. She was too mature for the boys her age, she said, and found daddy to be like some romantic movie star like you would see in the movies. One Sunday, after one of the church meetings, daddy asked Granny Jolly if she would mind it if he were to call on momma at their home in Tiftonia, where they lived in a yellow section house by the railroad tracks. “If it’s alright with Fanlee, it’s alright with me,” said Granny Jolly and invited daddy to join them for dinner that very day, momma recalled, saying that her mother had taken a shine to daddy and considered him a good Christian man. A man that would hitchhike back and forth from Atlanta every week just to be in church deserved a good chicken dinner, her mother had said. That was in early November, 1940, and for the next several weeks daddy would go home with them for dinner and court momma in the parlor afterwards. “So we would be left alone and your daddy would take out his guitar and sing songs to me.” “What song did he sing, momma?” I asked. “The one that I remember the most went like this,” said momma, singing a verse for us with what we believed to be the sweetest voice in the world. “Would you care if I should leave you, would you care if we should part? Would you care if I should tell you that another had won my heart? Would you break your vows and leave me in this wicked world alone? Would your heart ache just a little, tell me darling would you care?” Every time daddy finished a song he would lean over and give her a little kiss on the lips and then sing another song, momma said, laughing with all us kids when she got to the kissing part. “Well, it was about that time, in late November, that I was invited by my Aunt Edith and Uncle Dan to come to Philadelphia and spend the whole month of December with them and their two kids, Skippy and Delores, who was my age. I had never been away from home before and I was very excited about it. “I wanted to go and it was decided that I could ride the train, which I had never done before,” momma said, adding that her ticket was in the name of Mrs. James Jolly, which allowed her to ride for free because her daddy worked for the railroad as a section gang foreman. It was too great an adventure to pass up, momma said, even for the Sunday songs and kisses she had been getting from daddy. “Compared to my daddy, Uncle Dan, was rich,” momma said. “He was a policeman and they lived in a great, big beautiful home in the middle of town. And everything about their home and the way they lived was just so fine and fancy, like something out of a movie. “And they were just the nicest people you would ever want to meet, and they treated me as if I were their own daughter,” momma said. It was the kind of attention and social setting that momma – being one of eight children growing up in the Great Depression – wasn’t used to. Delores was very popular and all her friends accepted momma as one of them, and there were always places to go and grand things to do, like parties and dancing and going out with the gang for sodas and ice cream and shopping in the big department stores. “Uncle Dan brought in the biggest and most beautiful Christmas tree that I had ever seen in my life,” she said. “It was so tall we had to use a ladder to decorate it.” One day Aunt Edith asked momma to go shopping with her to get a present for Delores. She wanted to get Delores a skirt and sweater, and since momma and Delores were the same size, she wanted momma to try it on to make sure it would fit. “So I picked out the most beautiful rose-colored sweater you ever saw, with a matching skirt that had little dots of green and little specks of rose. And it fit perfect. Aunt Edith asked me if I thought Delores would like it and I said, ‘Oh yes, she’ll love it! I just know she will!’ “On Christmas morning there was a beautifully wrapped package under the tree with momma’s name on it. When she opened it, she could hardly believe her eyes. It was the very same sweater and skirt that she had picked out for Delores! Momma said that she was so happy, she almost cried. And that made me almost want to cry too, when she said that. “And not only that!” said momma. “Aunt Edith told me that they wanted me to stay with them, and live with them like their own daughter, and go to school with Delores! “But I couldn’t.” “But why didn’t you momma!” us kids wanted to know. That’s when she took the little golden locket from a faded blue box and showed it to us. It was shaped like a heart and hung from a delicate golden chain. She opened it to show a picture of daddy on one side and a picture of her on the other. “This was also under the tree, along with a letter from Albert, asking me to marry him,” she said, smiling. “And I couldn’t refuse the man I loved. “And it’s a good thing too, or you kids wouldn’t be here,” she added. I didn’t understand exactly what she meant by that last part. But it seemed pretty logical to me that if she hadn’t married daddy, she wouldn’t have been in Atlanta to pick me out from the babies at the hospital. And yet, there was still a little part of me that felt a little sad that she had not been able to stay with her rich aunt and uncle and have a wonderful life. Daddy and Uncle Robert did get back that night. And the next morning we found that good ole St. Nicholas had left us with guns and holsters for the boys and baby dolls for the girls. And all our stockings were filled with apples and oranges and nuts and candy. I had wrapped all my Life Savers up in white tissue paper – that part between the outside wrapper and the toilet paper inside – and placed them under the Christmas tree the night before. And I was watching, while pretending not to be watching, as the different kids picked up the one with their name on it. Suddenly all I saw was Aunt Bonnie. She had opened hers and was standing in front of me with her arms outstretched and tears puddling up in her eyes. It took the tuck right out of me and I was sorry that I had given her the worst. But she said that Winter Green was her favorite flavor and hugged me. As I left to go play with the others, I passed momma and daddy in the kitchen. They were hugging each other and momma was holding a giant bottle of Jergens Lotion. “Why, Albert,” she exclaimed, “this is the biggest bottle of Jergens Lotion I’ve ever seen!” And it was. I figured it was big enough to last a hard working woman about 10 years. As I looked at daddy - with his brown work pants that were a little too short, and his bright Florida shirt a little tight for his belly, his little straw hat and old brogans – standing there with momma – still beautiful and happy, despite the hard work she had to do separating the sheep poop from the wool at the old Peerless Woolen Mill, and the strain she endured with having so many mouths to feed all by herself that whole year – I thought about the golden locket. And I still do. It’s like another little Christmas memory that momma told me. It was about the time her mother told her that there was no Santa Claus. She was eight and it was during the Great Depression. Momma wanted a Shirley Temple doll. She let it be known that that was what she was hoping Santa would bring her. When momma’s mother told her that there was no Santa Claus, it made her cry. But she hung her stocking up anyway, and on Christmas morning there was a Shirley Temple doll in it. Momma found out later that it hadn’t come from Santa Claus, but from her older sister Nell who had overheard what was said and saw momma crying. Nell, who had a job, bought it for momma and put it in her stocking. It’s easy to tell by the way momma smiles when she tells that story that the greatest gift she received that Christmas, on looking back, wasn’t the doll, but a sister’s love. It was Aunt Nell making sure that momma got the Shirley Temple doll and could believe one last time in Santa Claus. Christmas should be a time of sweetness and love. So, every year about this time certain memories come drifting back to me. Aunt Bonnie, Aunt Nell, momma and daddy. But mostly I remember momma and the Christmas stories she told me. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, as the newspaperman said. It’s called love. It locks our hearts together as members of the human family. It’s like the golden locket hanging from a golden chain that daddy gave to momma with their pictures in it on that Christmas so long ago. When she opened it up, she couldn’t deny it. It was the same with Aunt Nell when she heard momma crying. Her heart opened up and a Shirley Temple doll leaped out and found its way into momma’s Christmas stocking. For as long as there is love, there will always be a Santa Claus and gifts from the heart at Christmas time. And the greatest gift of all will always be love. Merry Christmas
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