A CHRISTMAS STORY
by james von Feldt
Welcome to the 20th issue of NO JUNK MAIL.
As an introduction to this podcast, I would like to thank you for tuning in to my stories. I am amazed and honored that you listen. Thanks again for tuning in.
And now, on with today’s story.
T’was the night before Christmas, and all around town,
the lights were a-twinkling and making no sound.
Excitement was building. The plans were in place.
The dinners were finished by children in haste.
Run Gabbie, find Alex, call Justin and Gage
There’s Braden and William on the very next page.
It all started the Monday before Christmas on the bus coming home from school. The kids were arguing, yelling, and wildly gesturing in the back of the bus. It was the last day of school before the holidays, and the school day had been filled with Christmas events. They were excited. They were pumped. They were about to burst with energy, probably from consuming too much sugar.
Well, no one remembers who came up with the “great” idea, but they were all in on it. What was finally agreed on was simple. They were going to create a Christmas Float like the Christmas Day Floats on TV; only, their Float would be set up, right on stage in the Park Pavilion, displayed for all to see. It would be a surprise gift for the whole town to remember.
So, what could possibly go wrong with that idea?
Anyway, after getting home, changing clothes, and snacking a bit, the ones who remembered what they were talking about on the bus headed for the Park Pavilion. Six showed up raring to go. Alex was the one that remembered to bring a pencil and paper; only one sheet at that.
In no time at all, both sides of the page were full of ideas and pictures. The group huddled around a picnic table in the Pavilion. Justin brought his flashlight so they could see what they were doing. It gets dark after five o clock, and the Pavilion lights are turned off for the winter.
They were dressed for the cold weather, but Gage and Brayden forgot their gloves and couldn’t finish their drawings. When the flashlight gave out, the discussion went on, but the ideas came so fast, and furious many were lost in the excitement.
“We’ve got a problem,” Alex stated as if he was in charge. At first, no one paid any attention.
“Shut up for a minute,” he shouted, and everyone stopped and looked at him.
“We’ve got a problem… people are coming around to see the town decorations. They’re going to see us. We’ve got to find a better place to meet.”
Well, he was right there.
The town Decoration Committee had hit a compromise. The work was done, and it was a splendid sight to behold.
The Pavilion had thin strands of lights hanging down from the gutters all around. A big sign on the roof glittered in the light of a spotlight, saying with big red letters, “Welcome Home.” A very fat, Styrofoam Snowman with a carrot for a nose, prunes for eyes, and bright lipstick making a mouth was right by the sidewalk. And there were twelve huge, hand-painted Christmas displays that tell the Christmas story placed on the grounds around the Park Pavilion. They were arranged so that people could walk from one to another, admiring the Christmas scenes painted on them.
“The lumber yard,” Gage suggested.
“But people go there all the time. They’d want to know what’s up,” William commented.
Justin blurted out, “The Gas & Grill, in the shed next to the laundromat, it’s empty.“
“I don’t think so,” Gabby added. “All the ladies do is gossip, and they couldn’t keep a secret if they had to.”
Silence filled the air as the little brains scurried over the town, looking for a place.
“I know,” Braden shouted, even though all was quiet. Then he hushed and whispered, “The Holcutt’s barn. We can ask the ladies, and I’ll bet they’ll let us. We can swear them to secrecy.”
It was a splendid idea.
The whole group moved at once without as much as a second, skipping, jogging, and chatting over the four short city blocks that took them right up to the front porch of the pristine, old Nimitz house where the Hocutt ladies lived. On the way, the group had voted Alex as the spokesman for the group.
The noise marching up the stairs, across the porch, and to the door announced their presence without knocking. Imogine came to the door to see what was the clatter, and seeing the group, called out to her sister.
“Look what we have here. Come right in. Come in, please,” Imogine toned in her low alto voice and invited the group into the parlor.
The inside of the house is a treasure of old antiques arranged in good taste for the early 1900s and a delightful feast for the children’s eyes. Their eyes were wide, soaking in twelve-foot ceilings, flowered wallpaper, beautiful large pictures hanging on the wall, real flowers in a vase, and the old-fashion chairs tastefully placed around the room. The parlor stove in the corner radiated warmth.
Sara asked if they would like some hot chocolate and invited the children to sit down.
Alex started to explain why they had come, but Gabbie beat him to it with, “Oh, I’d love a cup of hot chocolate.”
So that was that.
Manors demand that you sit and chat for a while when you come for a visit and agree to be served, and they knew it. Eyes flashed back and forth. Slowly they took off their coats and settled down for a chat.
The hot chocolate and cookies were served, and slowly the questions about family and school were answered.
Imogine knew something was up and eventually asked, “What brings you over this evening?”
Alex hesitated, but Gabbie jumped right in. “We want to make something special, and we need a secret place to make it,”
Gage added, “And you can’t tell anyone, promise?”
“I’m not following,” Imogine said.
“The barn,” Alex said. “We want to use the barn to make a surprise so no one will know till Christmas Day.”
Actually, the group hadn’t discussed the details yet, but this sounded OK, and they just nodded along as Alex spoke.
“It’s cold out there,” Imogine said. “You will have to dress warmly.”
“We will, we will,” they chimed in, and at that very same time, the old pendulum clock in the corner began to strike five o’clock.
“We have to go now,” Brayden said. “Our folks will be looking for us if we’re too late for dinner. Can we start in the morning?”
Imogine shook her head as if to say “yes” and said, “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Out the door and down the stairs they went, talking non-stop, not listening to anyone, in particular, just chattering as they skipped and ran to their homes to keep warm.
At this very same time across town, which is not very far since it was only three blocks away, Larry and Vicki had been talking about how the neighbors used to go caroling from house to house on Christmas Eve. The thought was full of memories and old feelings of Christmas, eggnog, and friends. Remembering the old customs just made them feel good.
“Let’s do it,” Larry exclaimed. Vickie was a bit surprised.
“I thought you didn’t like going out at night,” Vicki said as she turned and threw a dishtowel at him.
“This would be fun. I could call the guys at the Fire Station, and you could call the ladies. I’ll start calling now.”
“Not so fast,” Vicki said laughingly.
“Dry the dishes first. And while you’re doing that, I’ll call Catherine; she’s got a good printer. She can print the words of the songs for us.”
Larry and Vicki’s calls rounded up three couples excited about the idea. And, as the idea got around town, the caroler’s number grew and then grew some more.
The final plan was that the carolers would meet at the lumber yard at five o’clock on Christmas eve. At five, people will be home – probably eating dinner. Also, Larry drew up a map in such a way as to sing carols at houses on every block. It wouldn’t be a long journey as our town is small.
The Gas & Grill was to be the last stop. They would sing a final mini-concert inside where it is warm. Cookies would be available, and eggnog would be flowing.
So, you see. Christmas things are starting to happen in our town.
The next day, Tuesday morning, the kids met in the Holcutt’s barn. Brayden brought his dad’s bucket full of tools. Gage didn’t make it because his mom made him go Christmas shopping in the big city of Ottumwa.
The big discussion was “what are we going to make.” They talked about this, then that, but they weren’t agreeing. Finally, in frustration, Gabbie declared she was going to make a giant duck.
Justin said, “No Way. I want to make a tank with a big gun on the turret.”
Brayden agreed.
William liked that idea too. He had suggested a Nintendo Monster, a Flying Tractor, then a huge Yo-Yo, but none of these ideas were as good as a tank.
“I’m going to make a duck. I can make it look real,” Gabby said with firmness.
“OK,” William taunted, “So, what are you going to make it out of?”
“Cardboard,” she replied.
“I thought about it all last night. Mr. Randolph just bought his wife a new dishwasher and refrigerator. The cardboard boxes are all I need.”
“What will you make your tank out of?” she said slyly.
The boys just looked at each other. They had not begun to think about the “how” of things. They were still in the idea stage.
“Well,” Justin murmured slowly, “We could use wood from palates to frame it.”
“And maybe borrow a big wagon with wheels to put it on,” chimed in William.
“Yeah, and we could use cardboard to cover the frame and the gun,” added Brayden.
Justin was on a roll. “I helped Jerry unpack cabinets at the lumber yard last Saturday,” he said. I’ll bet he would give us the cardboard and packing.”
So there it is. Not one but two Christmas floats are in the planning.
Lists were made, and soon Alex dispatched the eager workers to find needed materials. While they were running around town and back and forth to the barn, Alex went home and got peanut butter sandwiches for everyone. Gage arrived after lunch and decided to help find materials for the Duck.
It took all day Tuesday, but eventually, cardboard, discarded cans of house paint, duck tape, several wooden pallets, paintbrushes, and more were gathered at the barn. Alex borrowed Fire Chief Kelley’s long crowbar to break the wood pallets down. Nails were saved and straightened. By dinner time, materials were bunched into two piles, one for the duck and the other for the tank.
The kids were tired. They had worked hard finding materials and carting them to the barn. Imogine had looked in from time to time but had not made any comments.
Wednesday morning, after fits and false starts, the projects began to take shape.
The standing duck was simple to make but had a design problem; it kept falling over. Besides that, there wasn’t enough cardboard for this design. After struggling all day, Gabbie and Gage gave up and were ready for plan “B.” The final version was to be a duck in a swimming position. This would work.
Meanwhile, things were not going well at the “Tank” project; it was in trouble from the start. William and Braden argued about what it would look like and how to make it. There was a lot of shouting going on. William quit and went home before lunch. After lunch, William came back, and Braden quit. Justin and William made some progress, but not much.
After dinner, Brayden returned. The boys saw that they were running out of time and compromised. The design was simplified. The base was partially assembled before they went home. There was still a lot to be done; the turret had to be totally re-made, and the gun barrel had not been started yet.
It’s Thursday now, and time was getting short.
By noon the duck body was fashioned from the refrigerator cardboard box. That afternoon the duck head was sculpted from part of the dishwasher box. Two pallet boards nailed inside the head allowed it to be attached to the body: Duck Tape helped. Gage figured that out all by himself.
By Thursday evening, before dinner, the duck fit together perfectly. It was ready to disassemble and take to the Pavilion.
The tank, on the other hand, was more complex. Basically, the tank was to be made of a big box for the tank body and a smaller box, the turret, was to sit on top. A gun barrel was to stick out of the turret. The bottom box had to be reinforced with small Pallet boards and Duck Tape to hold together.
After dinner, the whole crew came back to the barn and discussed what had to be done. The Duck needed paint, but it was ready to move to the Park Pavilion. They all pitched in and carried parts to the Pavilion and set it up on stage behind the curtain. It was dark outside and on the stage. The stage lights would not turn on. Alex went home and came back with a flashlight. Gabbie and Gage started painting the Duck by flashlight.
Gabbie has been taking painting lessons from our town artist Gini Lammert. She knew exactly how she was going to paint the Duck. It needed feathers. She would use a little white etched with a bit of yellow paint on the brown cardboard. The Eye and an eyebrow were to be black edged with white. The beak would be yellow.
While Gabbie and Gage were painting, Alex, William, Justin, and Braden were in the barn working on the parts of the tank. With Alex supervising, everything came together. Finally, the tank was disassembled and taken to the pavilion after dinner. It was set up next to the Duck.
William started using a marker to draw features that looked like camouflage on the Tank, but the flashlight gave out. They were all tired. They went home.
Meanwhile, about six-thirty that evening, the Carolers met at the Fire-house for practice. Catherine had made twenty copies of the Christmas lyrics. Everybody knew the tunes. They practiced and practiced. They were starting to sound good, adding a bit of harmony here and there. They were tired of practicing by eight o'clock and just sat around eating cookies that Vicki had made. All had a good time. Slowly they left the Fire Station and headed for home.
I need to take a moment here to describe the Park and Park Pavillion for those who have not been to our town.
The Park is right smack dab in the middle of town. The main road goes right by it.
The Pavilion is a simple, long, narrow, open structure. On one end, there is an enclosed kitchen with an eating area. On the other end, a stage. A roof covers the whole building.
The kitchen is enclosed with walls all around it. The stage has a raised wooden floor. There are walls around that part. The front of the stage is enclosed by a heavy curtain. However, most of the building is open; no walls. The roof connects and covers both the kitchen and stage. Park tables are set up by the kitchen. Benches are in front of the stage area.
By now it’s Friday morning, Christmas Eve. The finish line is in sight.
Right after breakfast, the painting began again. With just a little more work the paint job on the tank was completed. Something the kids learned was that paint doesn’t dry fast in cold weather. The Duck’s paint was still wet to touch from the previous night’s painting.
An old fan was found in the Holcutt barn and borrowed in an effort to dry the paint. They found that the electric wall outlets were alive. Hopefully, the paint would dry before Christmas morning.
Everything was done before noon; that is, everything but fixing the gun barrel on the tank; it kept falling down. The boys tried several fixes but they weren’t working.
Brayden came up with an idea. He was going to town with his folks and he would come back with some glue; that, and a “trouble light” to dry the glue, would fix the problem. They all agreed.
Together, they stood in front of the curtain and imagined what the floats would look like. Of course, they couldn’t see the Duck or Tank because the curtain was drawn. They were wondering what would it look like when people would see it for the first time.
They agreed to meet at eight o’clock, Christmas morning, to pull the curtain back.
By three o’clock Brayden, Justin and William were behind the curtain working on the gun barrel. A hole was made in the backside of the turret so they could wrap a piece of cardboard around the end of the barrel and glue it to the box below. Duck Tape helped hold it in place for a while. The very old trouble-light turned on. It was warm. They laid the light bulb on the part that was glued and waited. It held. They waited around a bit longer to see if it would continue to hold and it did. They left the light in place to make sure the glue dried.
It was dark at five o’clock when the Carolers met at the lumber yard. They went south on Main Street to First Street, then turned west on Shelton. Things were going well. They sang songs at each house where there were lights. In about forty-five minutes they were on North Street when they smelled smoke. It was dark. They couldn’t see where it was coming from and they didn’t think much of it as many have wood-burning stoves in their homes.
They were right in the middle of a set of Christmas songs at Pat Held’s home when the town Fire Siren went off.
Three of the Carolers were voluntary firemen. The Fire Station was one block away. They ran. Cell phones began buzzing as the calls started around town. Questions were being asked; who was in trouble? Where was the fire? Was the fire in our town?
The worst fear in the winter is a house fire. It is devastating to have to experience one and they can be very deadly, especially if they happen in the middle of the night, and people are asleep.
The Carolers saw Fire Chief Kelley pull his truck out of his driveway and drive four blocks to the Fire Station with his siren blaring and lights blinking. On the cell phones, no one seemed to know why the town siren was blaring.
However, it just so happened that Christian Miranda, Autumn, and their new baby were on their way to a Christmas Eve service in Bloomfield. As they drove by the Pavilion they saw smoke rolling out of the stage area. They stopped and called 911.
The Carolers were huddled together talking on their cell phones when they saw firetrucks leave the Fire Station. The trucks didn’t go far. The Park is right across the road and down the street about a thousand feet.
When the Carolers saw that the trucks had stopped they set off in a run toward the park. As soon as they got to the corner they could see flames coming out the roof over the stage.
Fire Chief Kelly saw them coming and directed them across the street out of the way.
More of the voluntary firemen began arriving. The fire hoses took time to pull out of the trucks and hook up. By the time the hoses were ready, a team of volunteer firemen had gathered and was working to put the fire out.
The fire was on the stage. The stage floor, walls, ceiling, and roof were a bright billowing blaze of fire and smoke. The “Welcome Home” sign was burning. The spotlight exploded showering sparks high in the air. The fire spread fast consuming much of the roof covering the stage area approaching the street.
The firemen were trying to save the rest of the roof, the part over the kitchen area.
The crowd of on-lookers grew large as neighbors hurried to the park. Cell phones had been used to spread the word through town quickly. Frosty directed the spectators across the street as they arrived.
Huddled together, in the middle of the crowd, stood six kids with hang-dog, guilty-as-sin looks on their faces. Everyone around them was talking and wondering how this had happened. Brayden’s dad was looking right at Brayden with a curious look. Gabbie saw it and began to cry.
“What should we do?” William whispered.
Justin blurted out “We got to tell.”
Fire Chief Kelly walked across the road toward the crowd of on-lookers.
“Has anyone seen any activity over at the Pavilion today?”
There was a few seconds of silence then Alex took a step forward from the group and said, “We were working on the stage today.”
Fire Chief Kelley walked over to the kids and the conversation began. Gabbie’s crying continued for a while as the whole story unfolded.
It came out in bits and pieces; the Christmas float idea, finding the material, the work they did, the Christmas surprise for the town. As they were going through their story on-lookers attested to parts of the story.
“Yes I gave Gabbie cardboard,” Mr. Robinson said.
Others spoke out too.
Dannie, our mayor, stepped out of the crowd and came right up to the Chief and the kids.
“You had a good idea,” he said, “but it didn’t work out too well. In fact, I think it’s a great idea that we should keep. Just imagine what it would look like to have a new stage and Pavilion filled with Christmas Floats.”
A few voices of approval arose from the crowd who had been listening intently.
John Hilbert yelled out, “my family will build one.”
“And we have a project to do next spring,” the mayor went on. “We built the Pavilion with our own hands years ago and we can build a new one next spring.”
By now the crowd was bustling with comments.
Larna Good, who runs the Four-H group spoke up, “the four-H’ers can make one too.”
The mayor added, “Anyone who wants to, can make one for us next year.” I’ll be putting together a Christmas Float committee next week. You can start planning now.”
The crowd murmured their approval as they began envisioning what our town would look like next Christmas.
It was about this time that the Carolers began singing
“God rest ye merry gentlemen
Let nothing you dismay
Remember Christ our Savior
Was born on Christmas Day”
Bit by bit, person by person, people began joining in the song.
The whole scene began to change from excited emergency to something else. As each verse was sung the song became louder. Very soon, everyone, even the firemen were singing. The scene was amazing.
After a while, as the fire began to dwindle, Larry led the way toward the Gas & Grill - the kids in tow. The whole crowd followed singing along with the carolers.
The mini-concert was called off but the visiting and sampling of cookies and egg-nog went on as scheduled.
The kids were lectured as well as complemented. It was confusing and exciting at the same time. The mayor, Chief Kelley, their parents, and others had advice as well as scolding.
Sometime that evening William was heard to exclaim, “I know how to make a Tank.” Brayden responded immediately, “Mine is better.”
Well, that’s it for now, from where the corn grows tall, and pigs fly.
Wishing you a Merry Christmas and Happy new year
Take care.
All my love.
Grampa Jim