CHRISTMAS MEMORIES
Backwoods Blog;
in the woods and on the road…
A snapshot holds a memory in time just long enough for us to look at it and see what comes up now, all these years later. It’s a partial and brief glimpse that is available simply because someone happened to have a camera, clicked the shutter and sent it to the developer. Our smart phones make that process more frequent and affordable these days, and you don’t have to worry about wasting your 12-shot or 24-shot film, but the image caught in time is still just as amazing. These are just a few of the family photos taken at Christmas during my childhood growing up in the 1960s and they capture some of the magic that is Christmas when you are seven years old.
The Christmas dinner photo includes my grandparents, Laura and Ralph Stitham, my Dad, my twin sister Debbie and myself (Mom was taking the picture). I remember my sister and I, at that age, considering Christmas dinner an inconvenience, because we just wanted to keep playing with our new toys. If you take a close look you will notice Major Matt Mason standing on the dinner table next to my glass of water. It was the coolest toy going that year and I thought he might want some of my turkey and dressing instead of freeze-dried space rations. The Apollo space program was popular at the time and every seven year old boy wanted to be an astronaut. This was the year I got Mattel’s Major Matt Mason Space Station. In our household, toys from Santa were left unwrapped in the middle of the living room next to the Christmas tree and they were the first presents we would see when we came rushing down the stairs. All the rest of our gifts from family and friends were wrapped and placed under the tree. When I came down the stairs that year – there was the space station! One year I remember my parent’s attempt to capture the excitement level of Christmas on their reel to reel tape recorder which was about the size of an oven broiler pan big enough to hold a Christmas ham. They placed it behind one of the living room chairs so we couldn’t see it (as if we’d notice) and then turned it on just before my sister and I ran down the stairs to see what Santa had left under the tree. Later when we listened to the tape all you could hear was the sound of high pitched voices, the rustling and ripping sound of Christmas paper and utter pandemonium!
Several years later when I was playing with the space station, I happened to notice that white plastic bread ties were holding the console in the control tower to the white plastic gridded floor. Why would the elves have used bread ties? That’s when I suddenly realized that the little silver space guns I had been using were actually floor fasteners! It turns out my parents were more innovative than I had thought. Years later I asked Mom about it, and she admitted that the year they assembled the Major Matt Mason Space Station was indeed a very late night (and Dad was never one to read directions!). Go through your old family photo album this holiday season and see what you find from years and memories past…
Merry Christmas everyone!
In the woods,
Dave
December 21, 2022
Wow! These are such beautiful memories and pictures! The fireplace is a winner isn’t it? I am so glad I stopped this morning to read your wonderful blog and reflect on the past.