Ghosts of Christmases Past
Dec 25, 2009 8:24:03 GMT
Post by Kimby on Dec 25, 2009 8:24:03 GMT
Posting about Grandma's pie bakery on the culinary roots thread... anyportinastorm.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=anecdotes&action=display&thread=2955&page=3(#73) ...got me thinking about all those Christmases we spent at Grandma's. There was the 6-hour drive from Wisconsin around Lake Michigan through the chaos of the Chicago expressways to Kalamazoo, ending with the iffy charge in a fully-loaded rear-wheel-drive station wagon up the icy driveway to Grandma's house at the edge of the woods on a hill. (Her address marker down at the street was a pie plate with the street number on it.)
Grandpa died when I was 5, so I really only remember Grandma in that house. It was huge, to my childish mind; three stories above ground plus the pie bakery in the basement. There were 3 bedrooms on the second floor plus a day bed in the hallway, and 2 bedrooms sleeping 6 on the third floor, where I and my 2 sisters slept. A scary attic under the eaves was reached by a door off a landing halfway up the stairs to the 3rd floor bedrooms. We always wanted to peek into the attic, but had to be careful not to get locked in, as the door latch was only on the outside of the door.
If there was snow, we slid on flying saucers through the woods down into the driveway, sometimes with our cousins who lived two doors away. If there wasn't snow, we sometimes slid on our tummies down the carpeted stairway connecting the living room to the upper floors.
The woods sloped up from the house to a State Mental Institution, so it was always a bit scary to go very far into the woods from the house. There were always fat saucy fox squirrels walking the tightrope to a basket filled with pie crusts - those squirrels probably died young of heart disease!
We usually visited the public park in Kalamazoo on Christmas Eve to see the Chrismas decorations. There were rows and rows of Christmas trees, each row a different color as I recall. There were life-size figurines of carolers. There was Santa and his reindeer with the sleigh up in the sky, suspended from wires. And of course, a Nativity scene. (I'll bet that's gone, now, since it violates separation of church and state.)
The adults always gathered in Grandma's living room to open their gifts on Christmas Eve, and we kids would creep down the stairs, trying to open the landing door without squeaking, and watch from the stairway. We were always caught and shooed back up to bed. It was so hard to go to sleep when we knew Santa was coming!
When we woke in the morning, we were not allowed to wake our parents up until 7 o'clock, but we could go down and see what Santa left in our stockings, and open the gifts we had gotten for each other. All the Santa packages were off-limits until the adults were up and dressed. An eternity!
Santa was always good to us, the floor groaned with packages under the tree, and I was always amazed that Dad always found room for all that stuff in the station wagon that had seemed so full on our way to Michigan. ;-)
Cousins would begin arriving mid-day, and there were lots of them, as my aunt married an Italian Catholic and had 11 kids. Being Italian, they were very demonstrative, the opposite of my more reserved nuclear family, and I remember being quite apprehensive about being hugged and kissed by so many near-strangers, as we only saw these cousins once a year. They were also much more sophisticated than we were, so we managed to learn all kinds of stuff from them that our village life in Wisconsin hadn't yet revealed to us.
Grandma's dining room was huge, bigger than most living rooms, the full width of the house in length, and her table had lots of extra leaves. I don't remember much about the meal other than that it was a traditional meal with all the fixings. Plus pies of many flavors for dessert, of course.
After dinner, we'd gather in the living room and play games. A favorite was one we called "Fictionary". It involved one person selecting a word from an unabridged dictionary that they thought no one would know the definition of, saying it aloud to the other players, and writing down its definition on a scrap of paper. Every other player would create and write down a fake definition on a scrap of paper. The person with the dictionary would collect all the scraps and read them aloud in random order, including the real definition. Then we all voted for what we thought was the actual definition. You would get a point for every person who voted for your fake definition, and the reader would get a point for every person who did NOT choose the real definition. Once the dictionary had made the rounds of all the players, the game was ended. It was amazing to see how all these (related) people's minds worked in creating these definitions. Some were botanical, some mathematical, some astronomical, some literary. Sometimes two people would invent almost the same fake definition - often my Dad and me. One time a fake definition was "a three handled urn". The very next round that same definition was offered, only it turned out to be the real definition! My sister had actually stumbled on the word for a three-handled urn and gleefully chose it during her turn. Did she rack up the points!
We were always sad to leave, and the drive home was not as much fun as the drive there, though we did have new toys & books to entertain us. But it often got exciting as there were sometimes snowdrifts across the road as we got closer to home and I remember plowing through them, sometimes sliding off the road into the ditch and having to get pulled out.
It's been almost 30 years since Grandma passed on, and probably 33 years since I spent a Christmas at Grandma's, but it is ingrained in my memory.
Does anyone else care to share their Christmas Story?
Grandpa died when I was 5, so I really only remember Grandma in that house. It was huge, to my childish mind; three stories above ground plus the pie bakery in the basement. There were 3 bedrooms on the second floor plus a day bed in the hallway, and 2 bedrooms sleeping 6 on the third floor, where I and my 2 sisters slept. A scary attic under the eaves was reached by a door off a landing halfway up the stairs to the 3rd floor bedrooms. We always wanted to peek into the attic, but had to be careful not to get locked in, as the door latch was only on the outside of the door.
If there was snow, we slid on flying saucers through the woods down into the driveway, sometimes with our cousins who lived two doors away. If there wasn't snow, we sometimes slid on our tummies down the carpeted stairway connecting the living room to the upper floors.
The woods sloped up from the house to a State Mental Institution, so it was always a bit scary to go very far into the woods from the house. There were always fat saucy fox squirrels walking the tightrope to a basket filled with pie crusts - those squirrels probably died young of heart disease!
We usually visited the public park in Kalamazoo on Christmas Eve to see the Chrismas decorations. There were rows and rows of Christmas trees, each row a different color as I recall. There were life-size figurines of carolers. There was Santa and his reindeer with the sleigh up in the sky, suspended from wires. And of course, a Nativity scene. (I'll bet that's gone, now, since it violates separation of church and state.)
The adults always gathered in Grandma's living room to open their gifts on Christmas Eve, and we kids would creep down the stairs, trying to open the landing door without squeaking, and watch from the stairway. We were always caught and shooed back up to bed. It was so hard to go to sleep when we knew Santa was coming!
When we woke in the morning, we were not allowed to wake our parents up until 7 o'clock, but we could go down and see what Santa left in our stockings, and open the gifts we had gotten for each other. All the Santa packages were off-limits until the adults were up and dressed. An eternity!
Santa was always good to us, the floor groaned with packages under the tree, and I was always amazed that Dad always found room for all that stuff in the station wagon that had seemed so full on our way to Michigan. ;-)
Cousins would begin arriving mid-day, and there were lots of them, as my aunt married an Italian Catholic and had 11 kids. Being Italian, they were very demonstrative, the opposite of my more reserved nuclear family, and I remember being quite apprehensive about being hugged and kissed by so many near-strangers, as we only saw these cousins once a year. They were also much more sophisticated than we were, so we managed to learn all kinds of stuff from them that our village life in Wisconsin hadn't yet revealed to us.
Grandma's dining room was huge, bigger than most living rooms, the full width of the house in length, and her table had lots of extra leaves. I don't remember much about the meal other than that it was a traditional meal with all the fixings. Plus pies of many flavors for dessert, of course.
After dinner, we'd gather in the living room and play games. A favorite was one we called "Fictionary". It involved one person selecting a word from an unabridged dictionary that they thought no one would know the definition of, saying it aloud to the other players, and writing down its definition on a scrap of paper. Every other player would create and write down a fake definition on a scrap of paper. The person with the dictionary would collect all the scraps and read them aloud in random order, including the real definition. Then we all voted for what we thought was the actual definition. You would get a point for every person who voted for your fake definition, and the reader would get a point for every person who did NOT choose the real definition. Once the dictionary had made the rounds of all the players, the game was ended. It was amazing to see how all these (related) people's minds worked in creating these definitions. Some were botanical, some mathematical, some astronomical, some literary. Sometimes two people would invent almost the same fake definition - often my Dad and me. One time a fake definition was "a three handled urn". The very next round that same definition was offered, only it turned out to be the real definition! My sister had actually stumbled on the word for a three-handled urn and gleefully chose it during her turn. Did she rack up the points!
We were always sad to leave, and the drive home was not as much fun as the drive there, though we did have new toys & books to entertain us. But it often got exciting as there were sometimes snowdrifts across the road as we got closer to home and I remember plowing through them, sometimes sliding off the road into the ditch and having to get pulled out.
It's been almost 30 years since Grandma passed on, and probably 33 years since I spent a Christmas at Grandma's, but it is ingrained in my memory.
Does anyone else care to share their Christmas Story?
