Page 157 - People & Places In Time

MY Family Christmas
den as I write this. By todays standards it was not an overly decorated home; it was just perfect as I look back on time spent with family in this living room sixty five years later.
From our home on Palm Street we could easily have walked over, I made the walk nearly every day to play; but I don’t remember doing so on this night. Most likely because Carol and I were young, and it would have been dark, with presents and food to carry it was best to drive the very short distance from our driveway to my grandparents.
From our front yard could be seen above the roof tops and a block away, in Joiner park, along main street, a very old and tall Deodar Cedar tree covered in colored lights with a star on top. I think the tree could be seen from just about anywhere in town. Stepping out the front door, the sight of this tree throughout the season meant Christmas was indeed here. This tree is still there and is lighted, but someone cropped it lower and its just not the reminder of the season that it was. Perhaps that’s just me . . . maybe nothing today, can match a child’s memory of Christmas.
Arriving at the front yard there were life sized plywood cutouts that grandad had made of Mr. and Mrs. Santa Clause; there were other figures I just don’t recall of who or what, but all this lit by a spotlight. I do remember playing amongst the cutouts in the front yard when it was day light. A block away from our homes, alongside Highway 65 across from the women’s club, there was a small triangular park. During Christmas time, at the center of the park a life size crèche was set beside a lean-too shelter of weathered, rough wood. There were hay bales and lose hay spread throughout and all around; At the center of the various cutouts of Joseph, Mary, the wise men and assorted animals was a wood crib-like manger with a small rubber, baby doll lying in the hay. (Unfortunately, in our current world a community can’t do a display such as this anymore.) Anyway, as a young boy it’s likely the significance in all this was lost to me; so, with my partner in mischief, Philip Coble and I could climb around this display as well; no one seemed to mind.
Our family tradition had begun in the 1940’s and continued into the mid 1960’s even as grandad passed away in 1961. By this time Chery, Chuck, Carol and myself were in high school; in a few years we would transition to lives be- yond the families we had grown up with. If however, we were home, the families would gather somewhere. I remember a few times at my parents’ home at 323 Lenox Ave. in Exeter, but eventually we settled at Ralph and Pearls home on Sierra Drive. And here finally, for the last gathering that I can remember. This last time included Carols husband Jeff with their twin girls Shana and Annie, but I don’t re- member if Chery and Chuck were there. My Grandmother was there for the last photograph that I have of her. It was taken with my mother and my sister along with her twin daughters; four generations, together.
In back Chuck Pruner and me, Cheri Pruner, Grandma, and Carol in front.
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