Growing up in Louisa – Mystery Solved!
Weekly feature . . . by Mike Coburn
On a cold winter’s day back in the mid-to-late-forties, I awoke and found that something didn’t feel just right. It was a feeling of different I couldn’t figure out. It was as if something almost magical had happened to make a change in the atmosphere. It wasn’t just a new day, but was more like the beginning of a new revelation that had yet to be fully disclosed to me. It was another day, but it couldn’t be merely that the calendar page had turned. It had to be more than that.
I sat up on the lumpy mattress and pushed the covers aside. The shock of the cold would help me awaken. Oh, I knew there would be a chill in the air because I could see my breath. It wasn’t cold that was new, however shocking it was when my bare feet hit the wooden floor. What is different? Maybe a trip downstairs to the living room would help. I was sure the stove would be lit and would provide some warmth. I was right! I turned and backed up to the front of the fire with hopes my backside would benefit. When my clothes warmed I could turn and warm my front. Regardless, as I stood there I still felt that there had been a change overnight. My mind raced over the possibilities. I had seen Granny when I passed her room, so she was alright. Anyway, the feeling wasn’t a heavy, dark thing at all, but a happy thing. I looked out of the frosty window and projected a ghostly self beyond as if I was flying toward the sidewalk just feet away. Of course I hadn’t gone anywhere, but I imagined I had, which was almost as good.
I saw the frost on the bushes and grass and wondered if this feeling might have been that long anticipated first snowflake that I thought I saw out of the corner of my make-believe eye. If I wasn’t certain I had seen one then I guessed it didn’t count. It might have been an airborne ash from someone’s trash fire or from a chimney nearby. Perhaps it was a speck of something that dislodged from a tree or roof and was caught in the wind. Search as I might, the greying sky sent no more of those little floating enigmas spinning slowly to the ground. Why, I couldn’t even find the original, so it had either melted or maybe never was. As if in a dream I was pulled back into my now warming body in the living room. I thought I’d look out the front door as soon as I grabbed breakfast. I hoped some oatmeal had been made for I could use something warm.
As I spooned my hot breakfast into my mouth I conclude, that it was definitely a new feeling, like some kind of warning, but not one of dread, but light and happy, like someone showing up for a visit, or a trip to someplace I’d never seen. It was a strong feeling that I could not shrug off and just go on with life. I had to know. I began going over the facts I did know, such as anything that might explain my discomfort. It came to me that my mom would know. Thinking about that, I had seen strange behaviors from the adults in our family over the last few days. It appeared to me as if they were having secret meetings for some reason or another. Sometimes one of them would look at me, and then without looking away, whisper something to the other. That adult would then turn her eyes toward me and issue a knowing smile. Both would then would drop the smiles and return to their work. This gave me more reason to think something big was afoot.
Once I heard one of them laugh, then the other giggled. This was a rare thing in my house. The normal feeling when things like that happens is that you are the butt of someone’s joke, or the victim of a trick yet to be sprung. Naw, these people weren’t evil. They wouldn’t do anything to hurt me, so I gave them the benefit. It was of my good nature that I substituted that thought with another. For example, it was altogether possible that this behavior from the adults could be inspired by some juicy new gossip, but then I had not noticed any visits of the common carriers of such tales and stories. I knew that such news typically arrived with certain visitors and they hadn’t been about. My mind continued to search frantically for answers of why this day was different. Going down a checklist I had to admit that there was nothing of notice in the mail except the usual dull business statements. The phone that sat against the wall was almost totally silent, having nothing to say to either child or adult. It was a real mystery!
Clearly, the grownups favorite place to carry out conspiracies, if indeed there was a favorite place, was the kitchen. I had noticed that myself, by reason of my sharp intellect. I thought that if only I could eavesdrop somehow I could get to the bottom of this elusive feeling. It crossed my mind once that I might hide under the kitchen table just behind the draped tablecloth and secretly listen to what was going on. The idea of sitting for an hour or more on the cold floor in a cramped place wasn’t particularly attractive to me, so I dropped the idea. Anyway, I’d likely sneeze, or get to coughing, and expose my position and that I was on to them. That would put them on guard, sure enough, and would only serve to drive them more underground with their conspiracy.
I had no other choice. It was time to enlist others of my kind into the quest and work out a plan to spy. Kids are particularly good at espionage since they are not usually noticed or seriously taken into account. First, the three of us decided that we might send Cousin Julia through the kitchen, as if to fetch a glass of water. She would drink her fill and look around to see whatever might be occupying the grown people’s attention. Because she was so young, she’d be less obvious than either her brother George or me. Besides, who among them would mistrust such a sweet little girl? She was up for it and began her surveillance at once.
Yes, that was how we’d crack the case. We could take turns every now and again to find excuses to either cut through the kitchen, or stay close by in the dining room. Maybe one of us would hear a tidbit of what was being said. We agreed that George might take the dining room position since he often spent time there. They might not be alerted of any change in our behavior since we’d be careful to behave naturally. He suggested that he could sit there and read, or perhaps study an encyclopedia while keeping a close ear on any adult conversations. It was agreed, so he did so for a good while. In an hour or so he could only report that someone named Emily had dyed her hair again, which was apparently just in time considering her white roots were showing. We three wondered which Emily it was and why she had roots at all. Funnier yet, why would we care? Perhaps this wasn’t a person, but a kind of plant they named Emily, but if so, why ever would someone dye its roots? In the end we decided that wasn’t enough to cause this strange atmosphere that by now we all agreed was present.
It was Julia’s second trip, and the one I made to confirm her findings, that gave us a hint that was to be a small sign of things yet to come. My mom had made a batch of cookies, but was putting them away in a tin. It was more usual of her to put them on a serving plate if they were to be a treat for us darling children. Putting them in the elephant cookie jar, which Granny had said would be mine one day, would imply that they were for company or our consumption ‘later.’ But no, these cookies were going into sealed tins. I noticed that many had sprinkles of colored sugar and that a few had icing, but the shapes were all different. I swear I saw one that was star-shaped! I knew how these kind of cookies were made because I had helped mom once to use a big tin cookie press. All you had to do was put dough into the press, attach a plunger, and press them out neatly on a buttered cookie sheet. The problem was that it only served to give me another mystery. Why wasn’t I invited to help make them this time? I discovered that sometimes a single clue doesn’t explain the whole mystery. That thought frustrated me, so in my mind I thought, “So what? They had made some cookies. We’d eat one later, but meanwhile still didn’t have enough information.”
When mom saw me hanging in the doorway, drooling over the sight of hot cookies, she immediately came over to me and told me to go put on my coat. She said that we had to go out to the store. Even as we were leaving Aunt Shirley and Granny left the kitchen to do other things. Thus broke up our investigations, at least for a time. As I thought about it, I figured that I had been caught being suspicious and was responsible for messing up the whole investigation. Regardless, I vowed to myself that I would renew efforts to get to the bottom of all this once I returned from the store with mom.
The trip down to the store didn’t seem unusual in the least. I held mom’s hand and we walked down to the railroad tracks and turned toward Ed Bradley’s store. Once inside I left mom to look at cereal boxes, and then at jars of penny candy, while mom got some stuff like bags of flour, salt, and some other boring things. On our trip home, I remember we went by the depot and down to Clay Street, to wait for traffic to allow us to safely cross toward the Cyprus Inn. While waiting for some cars to go by mom spotted Mrs. Rogers, the preacher’s wife, over at the parsonage and exchanged waves. My arms were full so I couldn’t wave but I hollered out a greeting. The bag was already feeling heavy and may have slipped just a little lower, so I squeezed it a little tighter. Still waiting to cross, I remember that Adam’s grocery used to be right there and would have been a block closer than Bradley’s, but they’d torn down that store. Anyway, it was only one block further down to Bradley’s. I liked Mr. Bradley a lot. His brother used to work there, too, but he opened his own store downtown. I missed seeing him. He was a nice fellow, too.
Anyway, I still had to carry one of the paper bags home while she carried the rest, but mine was getting heavier as we crossed Madison. While walking next to the curb next to the Cyprus Inn, I tripped and tore the brown paper bag I was hugging. Still, by a miracle, I managed to keep all the items contained in my arms. I was proud of that. I guess if I’d dropped something and a jar or a bag would have broken, we’d have to go back to the store for more. As we walked toward home I had trouble seeing where I was going because part of the torn paper bag was flapping up in front of my face. Mom guided me by the arm so we made it to the front porch where I carefully sat the stuff down. I was still afraid that everything would bust open and spill out on the ground, so I took several trips from the porch to the kitchen to get everything safely put away.
As I thought, George and Julia had been totally distracted from their spy duties because of lack of leadership, and were busy at other things. It would be the next day when we finally started to get a better picture. It all came to us when there was a knock at the door and a former high-school student that Aunt Shirley had taught was standing there on the front porch holding a big cedar tree. I was instructed to hold open the door while the others rushed to help drag the tree into our living room. So this was it! Almost at once the house had a new smell and things really started to happen. The tree stand was there already, so I knew at once that someone must have been expecting a tree to arrive. I looked for George but he’d run upstairs for the Christmas lights. He also brought down several big boxes of ornaments, and lights and put them next to the tree. Either he knew all along or hadn’t connected what he knew to the mystery we were trying to solve.
Extension cords were used to test the lights. In those days if a bulb was bad, none of the lights would work. It took a while to check each bulb with new ones to finally have a string that was working and ready to wrap around the tree. A string of ‘bubble lights’ that were brand new last year, came out of the box next to be tested. We were lucky that they lit at once, but none of them bubbled. Mom told me they’d have to get hot before they would do that trick. I could hardly wait!
It was more than an hour later when we stepped back and enjoyed the tree we’d erected right in front of one of the windows where it could be seen out of doors. Sheets of cellophane icicles covered nearly the whole tree, but the lights shown through. I could sit and watch those bubble lights for hours. When each started working I’d shout for the others to see the wonder. Wow! Being bright children we three figured out finally what was special. It was nearing Christmas! The cookies and the tree were all the evidence we needed. Sherlock Holmes had nothing on us because the mystery was solved. The Christmas season had begun.
That very evening my mom suggested we bundle up and take a walk. As we passed the houses in our neighborhood we noticed that each had a brightly lit Christmas tree in a front window. A few had hung outdoor lights, those with big, heavy bulbs and thicker glass. These were wrapped around porch railings or on the evergreens next to the house. The Thompson’s two little girls were outside looking through their window at their tree. We exchanged some greetings and continued on. The Walker’s across the street had their tree lit. Jimmy, Charles and Myrtle were out to check the effect. Charles, the older of the kids yelled out to the others to keep them from running in the street. It was as if the whole world had put their trees up at the same time. Lights seemed to be everywhere!
We worked ourselves up past the Smith’s, the Keeton’s and Curtright’s to see the Adams house that was also lit up. Little did I know we’d start a family tradition of going out to see the Christmas lights. Well, maybe it wasn’t just our family tradition because folks were out all around town walking, pointing, laughing and getting into the Christmas spirit. Yes, all around town there were signs that Christmas was nearing. Downtown, someone had been busy hanging sprigs of pine and holly on the telephone poles and around the street lamps. If I remember right there were also images of bells, or brass horns, or maybe a face of Santa, that was attached, too. Over the years I may have seen a number of different displays, but in spirit they were the same. Christmas was nearing.
Carols were played over the roof-top speakers at the Methodist Church. I remember the voices of Emily Young and Blanch Hughes singing out with the church choir. Their voices grew to represent a feeling of home to me. I knew by instinct this was the sound of our community and was a tradition that even my mother and great-grandmother knew. Later, when I was older I’d take my place in the choir, too. Pete Armstrong was choir director in my high school years. Many prominent men and ladies of the community were members of the choir through the years.
Soon I would learn that practice had started at church for the live nativity scene the youth would present. Mary was represented by Sandra Adams, as I recall. One year I was a Shepherd, another a Wiseman. We wore costumes that had been put together by the ladies of the church. We had these robe-like garments and a wrapped turban on our heads. They kindly served up some hot chocolate on those cold evenings. It was appreciated.
The men’s class had put together a three-sided stable on the lot right next to the church. It was made of wooden slabs, which were first from some sawmill. The room was totally covered all about with straw, loose and bailed. They hung a bright light directly above the stable to represent the Christmas star. A real donkey was provided, as was a lamb and a goat. We lacked having camels, which was probably a good thing. We carried out the silent play a couple of times each evening leading up to that special day. We had background music and a narrator, perhaps Bill Cheek or Bill Keeton, that told the story from Luke 2, while citizens stopped their shopping long enough to watch the play. The sidewalk across the street, next to the ‘Corner Store,’ and the Flower Shop, was full of people watching.
In the years to follow I wasn’t confused about that magical metamorphosis of spirit that rose up in the community during the Christmas season. After all, I had anticipated and looked forward to this all year long, but that one year I didn’t see it coming. Yes, I remember that time when it was a total mystery to three little kids. I wonder still about how myopic we were, but maybe we weren’t the brightest bulbs on the string. Once we got plugged in, we, like the bulbs on the tree, bubbled with the joy that is appropriate for the season we celebrate. We can also be grateful that again this year the real Light of the world is still glowing and will forevermore. mcoburncppo@aol.com
