CHRISTMAS

Memories of Christmas were centered around activities. The Christmas sugar cookies that were cut into various shapes with the colored icing ( made from food coloring, powdered sugar and water) covering the tops. To finish off our masterpiece of culinary design, we used colored sprinkles. As I think back on it now, those cookies really did not taste that good; but we sure had fun making them together.


Another creative activity was placing the Christmas stencils against the windows and daubing them with glass wax to make them look frosty. Every window in the house, upstairs and down stairs was decorated. The application of the glass wax took a while to do and no one wanted to remove the stencils right after the holidays. Therefore, the art work could still be there until it was time for Spring Cleaning.

After daddy and Lynn or Michele would go down the street to the woods in our neighborhood to cut down our tree; it was time for daddy to climb up into the attic and bring down the Christmas ornaments that had been very carefully placed in their boxes the year before. There was a great deal of anticipation as each box was opened revealing the treasured Christmas tree ornaments; some of which had belonged to our mother's mother.

With the tree now in it's stand and positioned by the window in the living room; it was time to place the Bubble Lights on the branches. These lights were shaped like candles and had a liquid in them that bubbled when they got warm. Each ornament placed on the tree was different from the next. With all the ornaments in place; we were given strands of shiny, silver tinsel that we placed on the branches.

The last boxes to be opened were the train tracks and the train that daddy placed around the bottom of the tree. We all loved watching the train going around and around the tree and often placed small objects in the open cars.

The above picture shows three of the train cars that have survived the years. They are place around my sister Michele's tree in home every year.

Before we went to bed. all the lights were turned out and we all sat and watched in wonder at the magical, colorful Bubble Lights as they glowed and bubbled; what a sight to see!

It was a tradition in our house to secure a large sock to the window sill in the dinning room; we did not have a fire place. Each year we received: oranges, apples, nuts and hard candy. Peeking out of the top of the sock would be a small gift with a candy cane.

It was nearly a guarantee that you would be given new pajamas and underwear. We found out later that our Aunt Libby was the one who bought the underwear from a Dutch Maid party she had attended.

I think my favorite gift was the "Roberta Bride Doll: that I received. I often wondered why my sister, Michele, and I got the same doll; I thought that because it was called "Roberta" it was only for me. Recently, I found out that the dolls were made by The Roberta Doll Company in New York. That company is no longer in business and if I had the doll today, it would be a collectable.

THANKSGIVING

Mother taught us how to make homemade bread stuffing for the turkey. We all gathered around the dinning room table and began cubing the stale bread and chopping the celery; the preparing of the onion was given to mother. To this day, I do not chop onions.

Mother would be cooking the heart, gizzard and neck of the turkey in the kitchen that would later be picked and used in the homemade gravy that she would be serving. The left over turkey would be made into turkey soup. No matter how well you picked the meat from the bone on that turkey; there always seemed to be a bone in the soup that always ended up in my bowl.

When I was a teenager, the heart of the turkey became the focus of interest to me. Before it was given to mother to cook; I decide to dissect it like we had learned to do in Biology class; I wanted to show my mother what I had learned.

Culinary Memories

Pop corn was not made then as it is now. Daddy would get a very big cast iron pot, put oil in it and when the oil got to the right temperature, he would pore the kernels of corn into it and place the lid on top. Daddy would began shaking the pot and pretty soon you would hear the popping corn pinging the lid.

Instant hot chocolate?---never heard of it. Mother used Hershey's cocoa, sugar and milk. If we had whipped cream in the house that was quite a treat.

When there was new fallen snow, we made snow-ice-cream with vanilla, carnation condensed milk, sugar and salt. Daddy taught us how to do that and we always looked forward to that first snow fall.

Other foods I remember were meatloaf. The meat was bought in chunks and then it was ground up in a meat grinder that was attached to the kitchen table. Daddy also made a dish called Spanish Rice using the ground beef.

In our refrigerator was always a pitcher of Kook-aid. Mother liked to drink Pepsi and had the Kool-aid for us. However, every now and then we were treated to having Pepsi.

The two lunch meats I remember the most were bologna and pimento olive loaf. I was not that fond of either one and would rather eat lettuce and mayonnaise sandwiches on toast.

The one dinner item that mother made that none of us were happy about was squash. I also did not like spinach; but Michele did. Daddy fooled me once by putting a turnip on my plate---it did not take long to discover it was not a potato like he said.

My sisters like to remind me about the day I made them pancakes from Bisquick for breakfast. The pancakes were cooked---so I thought--and ready to eat. The color on both sides was a golden brown. They began eating them and discovered that the middle was raw. The pancakes were put into the dog's dish by Lynn and even the dog did not want to eat them. If the griddle is too hot the only thing that is going to cook is the top and bottom---lesson learned. I would like to think today if I announced that I was going to make them pancakes; they would not all get in their cars and drive to I-Hop.

CLOTHES ADVENTURES

Michele and I shared many things; a bike, a portable radio, a room and clothes. Sharing clothes as teenagers did not go very smoothly. Lynn and Pam remember an incident involving us fighting over a skirt we both wanted to wear. We really got into it! The rumble was at the top landing of the second floor. Lynn and Pam were standing on the bottom landing. They say that they wondered what was going to come flying down the stairs next; already papers and notebooks had descended down. We were in a serious battle and they fully expected it was going to be one of us that would be hurled down the stairs. If you ask me today which one of us ended up wearing the skirt; I could not tell you. Michele's memory is better than mine and she might be able to remember---some day I will ask her.

I do not remember when we got our automatic washing machine; but I do remember the one we had before that was a wringer washing machine. We were always told to be careful feeding clothes through it. Lynn actually got her arm caught in it. She and Michele began fighting over who was going to put daddy's shirt through the wringer. Lynn grabbed the shirt. It was daddy's shirt and she was going to be the one who wrung it out. She shoved it into the wringer; the shirt went in very fast and so did Lynn's hand and part of her arm. A scream from Michele was heard by daddy and he flipped the switch off at the top of the basement stairs and saved Lynn from having an arm like Gumby, (a dark green flat humanoid character on T.V. in the 50s).

All of us remember the big box the new washing machine came in. It was placed in a corner of the basement and whenever we received second hand clothes from our cousins, the clothes were stored in this giant box. The box was so deep that you literally had to dive or climb into the box to retrieve the article of clothing; like dumpster diving. After you found the clothes they needed to be washed; after all they had been stored in the basement and had a bit of a musty odor. The smell of "musty" on my chosen garment was not my favorite fragrance.

Dress patterns were often seen laid out on our dinning room table. Mother would make dresses for Michele and I and then make us purses to match our dresses. They were drawstring purses that had a cottage cheese container placed into the bottom for stability. Mother also made clothes for Lynn and Pam. The frilly dresses that were made by mother were not Lynn's favorite frock---she would much prefer to live in her jeans.