Holidays

I lean toward the curmudgeonly end of the disposition spectrum, so I find the commercialization of holidays vexing. Houses are decorated for Halloween like Christmas soon after Labor Day. Stores are open on Thanksgiving Day and the pre-Christmas Black Friday fervor, when businesses supposedly move out of the red, is to be avoided at all costs.

In '57, there were nearly as many holidays, but it seemed that each holiday's true meaning was respected. Memorial Day was to honor the fallen; the 4th of July was for celebrating Independence from the oppressive British and honoring the wisdom of the Founding Fathers; Labor Day for workers; Thanksgiving for family and giving thanks for your blessings; Christmas for celebrating the birth of Christ. 

[New Year's Eve was for toasting the year to come and New Year's Day was for football - some things haven't changed.]

Here's a compendium of my favorite holidays.

Memorial Day

A special favorite of mine - see my Memorial Day episode

Halloween

In a town of 250 it is possible to have complete coverage on Halloween. This trick-or-treater hit every house in town – less one. There was one house I never could muster up the gumption to visit. And across the tracks didn’t really count as part of town. But every place else was fair game. 

We didn’t spend much time worrying about costumes; a ghost from a sheet, a cowboy or indian, a soldier or a sailor was about the extent of our creativity. And of course, the large pillow case to haul the loot. In 1957 penny candy was nothing to sneeze at and occasionally you’d hit a Hershey Bar or a Sugar Daddy bonanza - not the miniatures, those did not yet exist.

My grandmother’s was a favored Halloween stop. She was renowned for her homemade donuts and she would dress up like a witch and hand out freshly made, still warm donuts skewered on a broomstick. It couldn't be done nowadays, the sheriff would be at your doorstep. But it was a highlight for the gang. Not so much for me since I raided her pantry on a regular basis. I tried to get John to convince his Grandmother Koudella to give out her kolachis, but no luck.

By 8 PM, when the pillowcase was getting hard to lug to the next stop. I’d spend some time swapping Bit-O-Honey for candy cigarettes and then head home, where the pillowcase was promptly confiscated by my mom. I never got into the "Trick" part of Halloween. Some of the older crowd might tip an outhouse or soap a window -  and invariably the morning would find a straw dummy hanging from the high railing of the water tower, but in general it was a pretty well behaved bunch of hoodlums in Lowry.

Gary seemed to have a gift for drama. One Halloween when it was raining, he managed to snitch a couple fireman’s coats and a lantern from the fire hall and he and a compadre stood at the 114 / 55 intersection and proceeded to stop eastbound “traffic” (maybe 3 cars) and falsely detoured them down 114 to Starbuck.

Thanksgiving

For my family, the long Thanksgiving weekend often meant a road trip down highway 71 to central Iowa, my mother’s home, with a rest stop in Estherville along the way. (I thought that town was named for my grandmother.) My mother had 4 siblings living in Iowa & 3 others living in the Twin Cities who often made the trip as well. 

It was amazing to see my normally reserved mother cackling like a hen with her sisters. My father always said - "6 sisters and not a dud among 'em". There were also 2 brothers.  

One of the Iowa sisters lived on a farm, raising .. wait for it .. corn! This was great fun for me. Although my Lowry grandfather still did some farm work on the home farm in Brandon, I rarely visited a working farm, except when I tagged along with my father on service calls, and this was usually after supper to fix a yardlight or a pump. So a trip to an Iowa farm was a kick. It was great fun prowling around the farm buildings and fields and crawling on the machinery. Here I witnessed the spectacle of slaughtering chickens - and they do indeed run around "like chickens with their heads cut off". (I wasn't quite as naive as an Iowa cousin's visiting college "city kid" roommate. The Iowa cousins had him up in the manure spreader stomping it down so they could get a full load.)

And weather permitting, we cousins always played touch football on the huge front yard of that farmhouse - sort of like Hyannis Port. And after the traditional turkey feast came the traditional NFL game - always Green Bay Packers vs. Detroit Lions - Tobin Rote vs. Bobby Layne. I was a Packer fan (don't spread that around) until they traded Tobin to Detroit and that Bart guy took over at QB. Then the Vikings arrived in Minnesota in '61 and that started 50+ years of agony. And after the left-over evening meal, the cousins tried to teach me how to play Euchre, but that was a hopeless cause.

Christmas

For me, Santa Claus and a fire truck are inextricably bound. In my world, Santa always arrived very publicly, not slinking down chimneys in the middle of the night. His arrival was also very predictable. He always appeared the Saturday before Christmas at 2:00 p.m. on Main Street Lowry, installed atop the hose-bed of the Lowry Fire Department’s pumper. It didn’t bother me that Santa’s helpers were people I recognized. I figured he just enlisted people as he went from place to place.  

The fruits of his visit were also very predictable. Every kid lining Main Street received a paper sack filled mostly with peanuts in the shell, an apple, one piece of ribbon candy, a few pieces of hard candy and one chocolate covered cream filled candy in for ballast. Santa didn’t have time to listen to requests, but we managed to slip him notes with a wish list gleaned from the Sears Roebuck catalog.  I tried - Dear Santa, Foto-Electric football - look on page 291. Strangely, Santa had a slight resemblance to Bob Chan.

waiting for dish washers

Christmas Eve included an afternoon church service and then hauling packages to Grandma's or Uncle Oliver's in Glenwood, with all the local Hoplins joining and occasionally distant cousins as well. There was the interminable meal with the delicious aromas and all the Scandinavian delicacies I would later come to appreciate. And once that ordeal was over, the punishing wait until the dishes were washed. Uffda. 

The tree was draped with tinsel, lit with boiling hot bubbler bulbs and buried under packages. But with all the people gathered, the wait for something with your name on it was torture. Generally the yield was 3 packages: one toy, one book, one article of clothing. In 1957, I got a Daisy air rifle - literally an air rifle, no BB's. But, wow. The next day, when it was well below zero, I took it outside and the plastic stock promptly broke off. No super glue or duct tape then - never could get it properly reattached. Other memorable years - an Erector Set and one bonanza year a Lionel Train set.

And then, Dec 26th and the reality of a frigid week of hardware inventory. Uffda. See the Hoplin & Nelson episode.

New Year's Eve, New Year's Day

Gloating Iowans

New Year's Eve was often at Uncle Bud's. The cousins usually played Rummy, Sorry, Caroms, Parcheesi, Chutes & Ladders, Cootie, Chinese Checkers or Monopoly (I liked Go To the Head of the Class, but it wasn't the popular choice) until midnight when we had a glass of eggnog mixed with 7-Up, blew on a kazoo for a minute and then packed up for home. I didn't pay much attention to what the adults were doing.

New Year's Day was for college football, and for me that meant the Rose Bowl. I was a big Big 10 fan and it was the Rose Bowl or nothing for the Big 10. There were no "Consolation Bowls" in those days. The Big 10 champion always played the Pac 8 champion, and in my beloved Minnesota Gophers were frequently a Big 10 contender. Believe it. In 1956, Minnesota was a top 10 team and lost only 1 game - shoutout by Iowa Hawkeyes (in Memorial Stadium no less). Iowa went on to win the 1957 Rose Bowl easily. Boy did we hear about it from the Iowa relatives. The Gophers did ultimately reach the Rose Bowl in '61 & '62, but not since and with the NCAA playoff in place, not likely again.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

In the spirit of the season, Distant Innocence is taking it off. Returning in 2015.