That one Christmas they were together
by Lewis Grizzard
We had only one real Christmas together, my mother, my
father and me. We had only one Christmas when we were actually in our own house
with a tree, with coffee and cake left out for Santa, with an excited
5-year-old awakening to a pair of plastic cowboy pistols, a straw cowboy hat
and an autographed picture of Hopalong Cassidy.
I was heavy into cowboys when I was 5. A man never forgets
when he scores big at a Western Christmas.
My first Christmas I was barely 2 months old. That doesn’t
count as a real Christmas. Then, we were traveling around for a couple of
years. The Army does that to you.
Then, there was Korea.
My father went off to Korea
and was captured, but then he escaped, and then we had that one Christmas
together before whatever demons he brought back from Korea
sent him roaming for good.
We were living in Columbus,
Ga. My father was stationed at Fort Benning,
which had been my birthplace. Army brat. War baby. That’s me.
We lived in a tiny frame house with a screen door that had a
flamingo, or some sort of large bird, in the middle of it. You remember those
doors. They were big in the ‘50s.
My father, despite what was going on inside him, was a man
who found laughter easy, who provoked it from others at every chance, a man
easily moved to sentimental tears.
The year after he came back from Korea,
I used to climb in his lap and feel the back of his head. There were always
lumps on the back of his head.
“What’s these lumps, Daddy?” I would ask.
“Shrapnel,” he would answer.
“What’s this shrapnel?”
He would attempt to explain. It all sounded rather exciting
and heroic to a 5-year-old boy. He, my father, never complained about the pain
but my mother said he used to get awful headaches, and maybe that’s why he
couldn’t get off the booze.
But that one and only Christmas, my father had duty until noon on Christmas Eve. I waited for him at that
screen door, peering out from behind that godawful bird.
Finally, he drove up. We had a blue Hudson,
the ugliest car ever made. My father called our car “the Blue Goose.”
I ran out and I jumped into his arms. “Ready for Santa?” he
asked me.
“I’ve been ready since August.”
My father, whatever else he was, was a giving man. He
couldn’t stand to have when others didn’t.
He’d found this family. I forget their name. It doesn’t
matter. The old man was out of work and in need of a shave and a haircut. The
woman was crying because her babies were hungry.
“They’re flat on their butts and it’s Christmas,” I heard my
daddy say to my mother. “Nobody deserves that.”
My father could work miracles when a miracle was needed. He
found a barber willing to leave his home on Christmas Eve and open his shop and
give the old man a shave and a haircut. He bought the family groceries. Sacks
and sacks of groceries.
He bought toys for the babies. There was a house full of
them. The poor, they are usually fruitful.
We didn’t leave them until dusk and the old man and the
woman thanked us and the babies looked at us with sad, wondering eyes. As we
drove away in the Blue Goose, my father broke down and cried. My mother cried,
too. I cried because they were crying. We all slept together that night and
cried ourselves to sleep.
Next morning, I had my pistols and my hat and my picture of
Hopalong Cassidy and maybe the three of us only had that one real Christmas
together – the old man had split by the time the next one rolled around – but
it was a Christmas a man can carry around for a lifetime.
On the occasion of my 35th Christmas, my father
long in his grave, I thank God it’s mine to remember.
The Register and Tribune Syndicate
