Taking candy from strangers

PANAMA  CITY — My parents taught me never to take candy from strangers. My children heard the same rule as they were growing up.

Monday, I broke that age-old imperative.

Entering the downtown Post Office, I joined a queue of people waiting for their chance to do business with one of the two clerks. Up ahead, I saw an older gentleman in a denim shirt and cap shaking a woman’s hand. She had a confused expression, and I saw him pass something to her during the handshake.

He moved on to the person ahead of her in line, and she opened her right palm to examine the mint candies he had given her. Little white-and-red swirls of  sugar wrapped in cellophane.

I wondered then if she was leery of accepting candy from a stranger, and I counted myself lucky to be entering behind him so I didn’t have to make that same decision.

“May I shake your hand?” I heard him ask the person in front of her. They shook hands, and he passed some more candy in the handshake.

He continued in this way to the front of the line, then spoke to the clerks, who appeared to know him. He turned to a young man who had stepped out of the line when a third clerk appeared to ask if anyone was there for General Delivery. He asked if he could shake the young man’s hand, but the guy held up a mint and said, “You did already, thank you.”

I saw the old man notice me at the back of the line, then. He started my way, and I wondered what my response would be when he asked. I hoped nothing smart-alecky would erupt, unbidden, out of my mouth. I looked up at the boxes wrapped in shiny Christmas paper on the walls and part of me hoped he would just bypass me.

But he rounded the kiosk of Priority Mail envelopes and extended his right hand. I spotted the candy wrappers peeking out.

“May I shake your hand?” he asked in an accent from the woods where I grew up.

“Sure,” I said. He gave my right hand a friendly tug, pressing two pieces of candy into my palm as he did so. I said thank you, then I asked how he was doing.

He almost turned away, then he looked up at me from under the bill of his cap.

“Not so great, if I’m still here and not in heaven,” he said. “I’m ready to go.”

I smiled as if I understood, but my true emotions were conflicted. I looked at the candy in my hand, then back at him as he opened the door and stepped through, shaking his head and repeating, “I am ready to go.”

It occurred to me to question if one should eat candy that came from a man who’s anticipating the afterlife so eagerly. But I unwrapped the cellophane and popped a piece in my mouth anyway.

It was sweet, and minty, and smelled like Christmas days visiting my great-grandfather. He always kept mints in the house — old-fashioned ones that melted in your mouth. And then I recalled this older fellow at Century First Baptist Church who would give the kids at the evening service mints or butterscotches when I was little. I hadn’t thought about that for a long time, and it was a sweet recollection.

I looked over my shoulder and saw the old man talking to someone in the main lobby, reaching out to shake hands.

Some days, like this old guy, I’m not doing so great. But I’m not yet ready to go. And so long as strangers can still offer a handshake, a smile, a gentle word — maybe even a candy mint — I’m not sure I should be in any great hurry.

Maybe, at my age, it’s okay to take candy from strangers. Maybe, in specific circumstances, we should be willing to take the chance.

Or maybe all of us in the Post Office that morning just got lucky and shared a little Christmas miracle.

Peace. 

Too early to tackle the tree?

PANAMA CITY BEACH — Say what you will about people who play Christmas music “too early” or put up their trees and other decorations before Thanksgiving. I’ve probably said something similar, myself, in the past.

But our Christmas tree was up last Sunday, which is early, even for us. Earlier, still, in context to the trees of my youth.

Once upon a time, my sister and I would accompany our parents to a tree farm somewhere outside of Century, Fla. , to walk rows of cedar and pick out a likely candidate. Once we got it chopped down, loaded onto the car, and lugged back home, Dad would trim low branches and prep the base for bringing it indoors.

Invariably, our cat or dog would drink from the water in the base. (These days, we only worry about a cat chewing an electric cord while climbing the metal limbs.) I remember Dad wrapped the lights, and Mom was in charge of icicles. I was in charge of dropping the fragile glass ornaments and then stepping on the slivers. It was a holiday tradition.

Once, I went with my uncle to pick up a pre-cut tree from one of many stores that had them leaning outside the entrance. On the drive home, he saw another store that had nicer trees, and stopped in to swap his out. Still trying to figure out how that worked.

These trees, already well on the way to dying by the time they came in the door, didn’t have a long window for use. At most, with a gas heater running 10 feet away, they’d last about a week. And even then, the last few days before Christmas would require wearing shoes in the living room to avoid getting prickly pine needles in your feet.

My pragmatic Grandma Simmons had an aluminum Christmas tree that she used for — I don’t know — decades? So I didn’t sneer at the advent (see what I did there?) of fake plastic trees some years later; it was just a tree of a different color.

Since establishing our own home(s), we have had several of these artificial firs over the years. We purchased our most recent tree from a friend’s garage sale. It’s about 7 feet tall and has built-in lights.

We put it together last Sunday, in part because we wanted to test the lights, but mostly because it will make our Thanksgiving Day (if we can wait that long) decorating party that much more fun — no wasting valuable decorating time having to lug the box out of the garage and putting it together when we’re ready.

Plus, we get to enjoy the lights a little longer.

Since moving into our current home, we’ve put up two Christmas trees each season. The one downstairs carries our collections of pop culture ornaments, and I have put up Grandma Simmons’ old tree in our bonus room at the top of the stairs, loading it with little handmade ornaments our kids brought home from school over the years.

This year, the upstairs will house our older fake plastic tree (the one that used to stand downstairs). We’ll decorate it with pink ornaments in memory of my sister-in-law, who died Sept. 12 of complications while under treatment for leukemia. My wife picked out the ornaments, and it was her idea to put up the second tree.

Our trees have always held objects of deep emotion and memory, from the faded plastic reindeer that Grandma Simmons gave me as a child (and that my father enjoyed as a child), to the Scarlet O’Hara ornaments we bought for Grandma Massey’s tree (and inherited upon her passing), to the “Joy” ornaments we hang in memory of our child-in-spirit, who died too young.

That’s the importance of these things, after all. Not when they go up or come down, but what you do with them while they’re here. The memories made by the light of the tree, the people recalled, the love never lost.

But then, that’s the important part of anything, isn’t it?

Peace.

Unraveling a warm Christmas mystery

Tony and Lisa, circa 1971

PANAMA CITY BEACH — I have no earthly idea where the cowboy outfits came from, except that Santa Claus must have had his reasons. Maybe it was a phase. Maybe it was a grandmother’s idea.

Whatever the origin, it’s now a personal Christmas mystery.

Back when I could still count my age and have fingers left in reserve, my family of four lived in a small woodframe house off U.S. 29 in Century, Florida. At least a couple of Christmases, part of the wonderment discovered under the Christmas tree included a full cowboy costume in the style of Gene Autry and his generation of singing cowpokes.

Now, please understand, Gene Autry’s movies were a bit before even my time. But my favorite Christmas music was an album of songs featuring Gene on the cover in all of his Hollywood-cowboy glory, standing tall as a miniature sleigh and tiny reindeer flew about his kneecaps.

Maybe that explains the costuming. Hat, boots, a shirt that would make a country music star swoon. One year, there was a fringe vest included, but I think by then I was in my Bobby Sherman phase.

My sister, as seen in a photo from about 1971 that she recently posted on Facebook, got a corresponding cowgirl outfit. We were a matched set — and pretty pleased to be so, if the picture is as accurate an indication as I believe.

I remember wearing the costume around to visit the relatives on Christmas Day. I recall wearing it to ride my bike, that trusty mount of my imagination, up and down the narrow road (not the highway!) beside the house.

What I don’t recall is actually asking Santa for the outfit. My father claims ignorance of the origins also, guessing that it’s possible “one of your grandmothers thought you’d be ‘cute’ in them — maybe Grandma Simmons.”

He’s probably right about that.

Now, Dad was a big fan of the singing cowboys in his childhood. He told me in some Facebook messages recently that he considered himself Gene Autry most of the time, and he had his third grade school portrait taken in a Roy Rogers shirt.

And Grandma Simmons often saw her youngest son (my dad) when she looked at me; she even had a habit of naming off her two boys before getting to my name, and her awareness of the mistake made any time she called after me sound like an angry exclamation at the end of the dusty trail (“Ed-Jerry-Tony!”). What I’m getting at is, I can totally understand her wanting to dress my sister and me like Dad’s cowboy heroes.

Grandma also had little gas heaters in the corners of each room back then, and in our house there was a gas heater in the living room that we would back up to on cold mornings. Christmas recollections thus come complete with sense memories of cold feet and clothing that got too hot on the back side for comfort.  

(Because of the way the heaters tried to warm the old house, Dad recalls “ceilings so high you were warm when you stood up but cold when you sat down.”)

I look at photos now of my children on Christmas mornings when they were little, and I wonder what mysteries the pictures will hold for them in the future. I hope they’re as warm as mine.

Peace.

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(My column for PanamaCity.com and The News Herald for the week of Dec. 20.)

Friday the 13th Will Be Your Lucky Day

PANAMA CITY — Friday the 13th loomed in my thoughts this week for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that I needed to have a column written for that day’s edition of PanamaCity.com.

I’m not superstitious, and the number 13 doesn’t frighten me — neither do deadlines — but both have given me cause to reflect this week (not that I need much motivation there; it’s sort of second nature by now).

So luck in all its forms was on my brain Monday when I took a turn down into St. Andrews. The morning fog had lifted, and the glowing gray-white sky had turned a gentle pastel blue. Men stood with fishing poles on the marina as the sun warmed the earth and the sea.

A haze remained over the bay, but fluffy cumulous clouds were building to the northeast, far beyond the tops of oak trees with their dangling moss beards and sleeves of resurrection ferns. I stopped in at Chez Amavida for a coffee and to see what Crystal had drawn on the brown paper roll behind the counter: Alice’s Mad Hatter was offering a Sumatra blend rather than tea.

All the best people are mad, or so Alice told the hatter. Good to know I’m in the best of company.

A beautiful day, I thought as I heard Bob Dylan singing, “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright,” and my mind tried to connect that song, about a man leaving a woman, to the concept of luck. Don’t question it, I thought. Don’t think twice. It’s a beautiful day, and you’re only passing through; it needn’t be more meaningful than that.

There are times when the obstacles life throws at us recall, for me, a song from the old “Hee Haw” TV show I remember watching many a Saturday evening at my Grandma Simmons’ home: “If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all; gloom, despair and agony on me…”

The night before this, I carefully extracted the parts of an old foil Christmas tree from the original cardboard box; each metallic limb was inside a paper tube, and each fit into tiny angled holes along the wooden trunk of the tree. I constructed the thing atop my desk and hung ornaments on it that my children had made in preschool, along with a few Happy Meal toys they had picked up along the years.

I pointed a light with a rotating colored disc at the tree, and listened to the soft scraping of the disc’s edge against the inside of the light cover, wondering when it would finally refuse to turn. It’s an old thing, this tree and its light. It belonged to Grandma Simmons and passed to me after her death. I felt lucky to get it, and feel lucky now that the light still runs.

Other things happened over the weekend to which I could point and proclaim my gloom, despair and agony. My luck runs true, but it tends more toward a slow progression; rather than two steps back for every one forward, I just take one small stumbling half-step back these days. Still, that would be enough to make most people curse their luck.

And then there are the moments of clarity, when the sun is bright and the sky is clear, when strangers smile and good music plays on the radio. There are moments of purity, as colored lights swirl and twinkle on a tiny metal tree, or breezes make hanging moss sway under oak limbs.

We must take the bad luck, if such a thing exists, with the good. We just have to choose which one deserves more of our attention — because, one way or another, this is a lucky day.

Peace.

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(My column for PanamaCity.com and The News Herald this week.)

Feeding hungry children at Christmastime

Moving pallet of food into pantry.

PANAMA CITY BEACH — I was touring The Ark recently, talking to director Bobbie Brigman and her husband Ric about activities and programs for seniors and winter visitors, when I met a young man named Jason.

He was volunteering in a food bank housed beside the worship sanctuary on the Ark’s campus; Jason’s family was staying in emergency housing on the campus until they could get back on their feet, and he was stocking the Food4Kidz pantry with items delivered that morning.

At another point during our interview, Ric’s phone rang and a hesitant female voice on the line asked if this was the place where she could get food for her family. His answer was, “Yes.”

“People are treated with respect and dignity here,” said Ric, a member of the Ark’s board, worship leader at the on-site church, and director of Food4Kidz, the pantry program housed at the Ark. “They call, make appointments to pick up food. There’s never a line here. Some of them I’ll see once, some I see every couple of months.”

The general policy is to feed a family once a month, but exceptions have been made in extreme circumstances, he said. For more information, call 249-KIDZ (5439), or visit Food4Kidz.org or Facebook.com/Food4Kidz online.

Food4Kidz is a local non-profit associated with the Feeding America program, receives supplies from the Bay Area Food Bank, and has been supported in its efforts by a grant from the St. Joe Community Foundation that purchased a van for the organization via Bill Cramer Chevrolet. Each month, Food4Kidz moves four or five tons of food — frozen, dry goods, canned items, pastries and more — and they feed hundreds of families.

“Some families are still trying to get on their feet after being decimated by the BP oil spill,” Ric said. “The family business is gone, their life savings is gone.”

The demand for help has doubled since last year, Bobbie said, and Ric added that the causes for that are difficult to pin down: Unemployment because of the end of tourist season jobs, general longterm under-employment, grandparents raising grandkids, or just because awareness of the program has grown.

On the two days prior to my visit, the pantry had served 11 families per day. In the worship center, I read notes left by parents and children who had picked up food there.

“Yesterday I had to decide between antibiotics that cost $80 or groceries,” wrote Paula, the mother of a 10-year-old son with health problems. “Of course I chose my son’s antibiotics. I wasn’t sure what I would do for food. I guess the lesson is to have faith.”

Ric stood at my shoulder, reading the note as I did. “That’s when we feel like we’re doing what we’re called to do,” he said.

Peace.
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(This is my Undercurrents column for PanamaCity.com and The News Herald for Dec. 6.)

Undercurrents: Notes, thanks & condolences

PANAMA CITY BEACH — Some random thoughts as Thanksgiving permeates the atmosphere:

• If you’re keeping count, on the day this appears in the paper there will be 29 days remaining until the end of the world, or possibly until the end of the Mayan “long count” calendar, depending on your point of view. Question: What would you do if you believed the world would end in a month? I’m betting Black Friday would be farthest from your mind.

• Speaking of which: By the time the sun was rising last Black Friday, I was trying to go to sleep after a night of shopping beyond my means with my family. I upset some people by posting a photo tagged “Occupy Walmart” just before the frenzy started on the DVD aisle.

I don’t think we’ll be doing that this year, though I might be unpleasantly surprised before it’s over. Question: Do you try to hit the after-Thanksgiving sales (or this year, the actual Thanksgiving Day sales)?

• A highlight of the season last year was attending the improv-heavy performance of “Every Christmas Story Ever Told (and Then Some)” at the Seaside Repertory Theatre. The REP is once again putting on the show every weekend in December. You never know quite how it’s going to go, kind of like the actual holiday — and also like the actual holiday, there will be laughter and tears.

• The election is over. Get over it. Unless you think it’s a sign the Mayans were right, in which case it doesn’t matter any way, so get over it.

• We have been house hunting for some time now, despite the impending end of the world, and it looks like we’re close to closing on one at last. I have enjoyed renting for the past few months, because the honey-do list shrinks significantly when you don’t have to worry about home maintenance so much. But now I’m looking forward to having a place to call our own again — and to having a place for all my books again.

If all goes well, and the world doesn’t end, we’ll be there before Christmas. If you don’t mind, I’m going to give thanks ahead of time for the continuation of life as we know it, and for a place to share with my family.

• Finally, please join me in extending condolences to the family of Tony Jordan Simmons (no relation), who died Saturday after a long struggle with COPD. When I first came to work for The News Herald in 1993, I received several phone calls from people who thought he had taken a job with the paper after retiring from his career as an officer with the Panama City Police Department. He even called me once to say hello, after he got some calls at his home from people who thought he might be me.

Now my thoughts and prayers go out to his family as they must say goodbye.

Peace.
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(This was my Undercurrents column this week.)

Word Prompts at the Writing Class

(Notes from the Rosemary Beach Conference for Writers continue...)

JD's prompt: Think of your foremost fear. Phobia. What are you afraid of? Write an example and attempt to trace it to a childhood incident if you can.

I wrote:

My greatest fear is the death of my children. They're both in their 20s, both intelligent, cautious, capable, imaginative. But I worry. Four years ago, a phone call from the FHP awoke us. My son's best friend was dead in a car wreck. 18 years old. I have not gotten over that and I don't think I ever will.


Phobia? Snakes. We lived by the woods in a rural area with a creek that cut through our front yard when I was a kid. Snakes every summer. Moccasins. Rattlers. Diamondbacks. King Snakes. Corals. We killed snakes by the bootfuls every year. Chopped with a shovel. Shot with a rifle. Our dogs cornered them. Our cat stalked them. Too many times, I ran right up on them at play. Now I have nightmares about infestations of snakes. The only good snake is a dead one. Just yesterday, my wife went out in our yard to water her garden and was about to sit on a little rolling tool box on the lawn — and there was a pit-nosed snake curled under it, just the tip of its tail showing. I split that thing in three pieces with a shovel before tossing it over the fence.


My fear is the lurking danger. The one you don't see coming, that takes your loved one in an instant. That doesn't give you a chance to say goodbye.

JD tells us: "Don't be afraid of failure. All works of art are failures. All we can do is try to fail better next time."

Writing is patience. Diligence. Tenacity. It can be a learned craft; the more difficult skill to learn is storytelling.

As fiction writers, we write about the things we don't understand. And we don't understand ourselves sometimes. Writing can be therapy.

We don't offer answers. We ask questions.

Fiction allows us to shape our troubles, fiction being defined as "to shape."

JD's prompt: Write about the memory suggested by this next word:
"Photograph."

I (knowing even then that my first thought was triggered by the previous prompt) wrote:

It's black and white, the color was leeched by a setting on the digital camera. I'm seated on a stool in the kitchen of my home. She's hugging me, caught under the crook of my right arm, her scented hair soft against my jaw, her cheek against my neck. I'm looking directly at the camera. I don't recall who was taking the photo now. All I remember any more is the sense of loss. She was leaving for college soon, moving away in a few days. It was Christmas week and we were making cookies, having a holiday party and goodbye party all in one. Two months later, she would be dead, but I knew everything was changing even then.

JD's TIPS:

• Notice everything. You cannot twist the fact that you don't know.
• Invent.
• Stop before you're finished. If you're working on an ongoing piece, then stop when you know what the next line will be; you'll have a place to begin tomorrow.

Next time: Flash fiction, obituary and myth.

Reading List for the New Year

The death of Borders contributed to a gigantic haul of reading materials for the family's Christmas presents. Additional books came from Books-a-Million's discount racks. This is a list of the books I received and will be reading in the next several weeks:

Hardback Graphic Novels/Illustrated books:
Instructions by Neil Gaiman & Charles Vess (I love the children's books by Gaiman, and Vess' illustrations are wonderful; if there's a special girl in your family, you should get her "The Blueberry Girl" by these two. "Instructions" is a good one for the adventurous little boy.)
DC Comics Year By Year: A Visual Chronicle
Jim Butcher's Dresden Files: Storm Front
Angel: The Crown Prince Syndrome
Seven Soldiers of Victory (Grant Morrison)
The Green Woman (Peter Straub)
Black Kiss (Howard Chaykin)
SHIELD: Architects of Forever
Deathlok the Demolisher
Spider-Woman: Agent of SWORD
Captain America: The New Deal
Annihilation: conquest
Doorways (George R.R. Martin) - based on a TV series proposal he wrote in the 1990s.

Devil Dog
Shadow Knights
It's a Wonderful Life

Paperback graphic novels/illustrated books:
Fantastic Four: The End
Exiles Ultimate Collection
Exiles: Starting Over
Exiles: Down the Rabbit Hole
Incorruptible Vol. 2
Human Target
Wonder Woman: Rise of the Olympians
Wonder Woman: Contagion
Wonder Woman: Ends of the Earth
Ultimate Elektra: Devil's Due
Squadron Supreme: Hyperion vs. Nighthawk
Spiderman: Fever
Criminal: The Sinners (Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips)
Zatanna: Mistress of Magic


Hardback Novels:
Doctor Who: The Coming of the Terraphiles (by Michael Moorcock)
Manhood for Amateurs (Michael Chabon)
From Hell with Love (Simon Green)
Fatal Error (F.Paul Wilson)
Hunting for Hemingway

Paperback novels:
Ghosts of War
The Bloodstained Man
Final Crisis
Torchwood: Risk Management
By the Sword (F.Paul Wilson)
Managing Death
Countdown
Morlock Night
Conspiracies (F.Paul Wilson)

Memories of Jolly Old St. Nick

(Note: This column initially posted as a repeat of this column. Sorry about the mix-up.) 

Tom Needham gets a new suit in 2001.

Once upon a time, long ago and far away …

My father worked for Monsanto when I was a kid, and each Christmas we would visit the plant north of Pensacola for the annual Christmas party. I was amazed by all the lights and decorations arranged outside, and entering the plant was like walking into a science fiction installation full of strange machines.

These memories are dimmed by time, but I still recall the employee’s band playing jazzy versions of holiday songs on some kind of organ, guitar and drums. A woman dressed as an elf thumped a tambourine. Christmas cartoons — Woody Woodpecker and early Chip’n’Dale — projected on a screen in a darkened conference room full of metal folding chairs. The sound of a movie projector whirring.

Waiting in line to see Santa Claus in the big cafeteria, then receiving a toy. I don’t member a specific toy, or even what we ate in the cafeteria, but I seem to recall being afraid of the Santa fellow.

You never knew where he would show up. There he was, on a frigid Saturday afternoon, riding atop the Century Volunteer Fire Department’s big red truck at the end of the annual Christmas parade. Ringing a bell outside the Kmart store. Riding a Norelco shaver on TV (I was pretty sure that animated Santa was the same version you saw on “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”).

We even came across Santa one summer on a family road trip. Somewhere in Georgia, I think, a Christmas village where you could feed reindeer and have your picture made on Santa’s sleigh.

I’ve met quite a few Santas in the intervening years, covering Christmas events at the Navy base, schools, day programs and so forth. One of them was a talented and big-hearted photographer in the off-season, and I miss him especially when the days grow short and cold.

Writing notes to Santa was part of the childhood holiday routine. (I even tried sending him a note one summer, just to see what happened. For the record: Nothing happened.)

We had lots of traditions: Circling toys in the Sears & Roebuck catalog (Mego heroes were particularly important); baking and decorating cookies with Mom; visiting my great-grandparents along with all of the extended family; reading the Nativity story on Christmas Eve.

About a week before Christmas, we’d go to the tree farm somewhere outside of town to kill a tree in honor of Jesus. Sometimes I helped Dad bring it into the house after he trimmed the base. We always used silvery “icicle” decorations, which would sometimes melt in contact with the glass bulbs. The ornaments, also glass, were extremely fragile and shattered into a million sharp shards if dropped. You spent the last week of December picking glass or pine needles out of your socks.

Santa always seemed to come through, no matter my reluctance to speak with him directly. Something I had circled in the catalog would arrive — a Batcave playset, say, or a Major Matt Mason mooncrawler — along with other things I hadn’t thought to ask for. Often, this included a cowboy outfit with fresh rolls of caps; I loved the smell of gunpowder on Christmas morning.

Smelled like victory.

Peace.

(Note: This was my column for today's News Herald. You can see it here also.)

Library event was fun

Sold a few books at the library's "Last Minute Christmas Gifts" event today.

Slim Fatz, a local bluesman, stopped by to drop off his newest CD, and I caught a photo of him while he was talking with flute maker and player Paul McAuliffe.

I met lots of new people and hopefully created some new readers. It was interesting to see that I sold as many of my older books as the new one. Two copies of "Welcome to the Dawning of a New Century," one each of the "City Limits" anthologies, and another "The Best of Days." Most people talkative and in a good mood, which makes those events worthwhile.

Every ornament tells a Christmas tale

PANAMA CITY — I don’t know about your Christmas tree, but ours is full of holiday stories. It has been described as looking like a toy shop exploded all over it, and that’s not far from true. It definitely is a reflection of the things we enjoy and the memories we hold dear.

There are heroes and spacecraft from “Star Trek” and “Star Wars,” superheroes and heroines, TV and movie icons from Humphrey Bogart to Jimmy Stewart to “The Lone Ranger” and “I Dream of Jeanie.” There are memorial ornaments for those loved ones we have lost, as well as ornaments celebrating our first Christmas as a couple and the first Christmases for our babies.

Some of them light up. Some of them make sounds. Some of them just hang there looking pretty. The one for “It’s a Wonderful Life” has a bell that rings each time an angel gets his wings.

The oldest item on the tree is a small plastic reindeer, once white but now faded to yellow. I last wrote about this artifact of Christmas Past almost a decade ago, but I retell its history every year as someone new sees our tree for the first time — or just to make my kids sigh, “Yes, Dad, we know.”

Back in the days of black-and-white television, Grandma Simmons had an arrangement of four of these little coursers attached by thin red ribbon to a white plastic sleigh. They generally occupied a windowsill or a tabletop through the holidays. And when I was just a tadpole, I would sometimes use the sleigh and reindeer to transport my Major Matt Mason dolls around the living room.

At some point during my elementary school years, Grandma passed the sleigh and two of the surviving deer to me. I don’t know what happened to the rest of the set, but only this single deer remains — fragile, yellowed, with a broken antler and chipped snout, and stains of dried invisible tape around its torso.

Each year, I perch it in a place of honor close to the top of my family’s Christmas tree. It catches the lights and seems to glow.

Other ornaments on our tree have stories, too. The silvery “Joy” that hangs near the deer, for instance. The Scarlet O’Hara figurines that passed to us from my other Grandma. The “Enterprise,” and the Snoopies, and the Harry Potter. My kids have their favorites, and my wife has hers.

The reindeer is mine. I place it on a limb and fall through a doorway to childhood Christmastimes, and not in a melancholy way like you might get from that old “Toyland” song. I miss Grandma, yes, but the memories are warm and filled with smiles.

These stories are important. They connect us with our past. They put the future in perspective. Someday, I figure, some item I gave someone will be a story told to a great-grandchild, a smile recalled, a gift cherished. I might be a faceless memory by then, but I will remain part of that story so long as it is told.

What story will you be a part of? How will you be remembered? What yellowed artifacts will carry your story into unknown days and plant themselves in the memories of generations yet unborn?

Peace (on earth).

(This is my Undercurrents column for Dec. 15, 2011.)
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EDIT: After this column initially ran, my father sent me these photos from Christmas 1952, showing him as an 11-year-old and the complete Santa's sleigh and eight reindeer as they originally appeared.)

Christmas Song of the Day: Fairytale of New York

On Twitter, I've been posting a "Christmas Song of the Day" for the past few days. Today, I put up the Pogues' "Fairytale of the New York." Tells you what kind of end-of-week mood I'm in.



Yesterday, the 31st anniversary of the death of John Lennon, the song was, of course, "Happy Xmas (War is Over)." I'm morally obligated to warn you that the video at that link has some gruesome imagery.

The day before, I chose the 21-minute long Francis Ford Coppola filmed "Junky's Christmas" written and narrated by William S. Burroughs. (So, the mood has been off all week, looks like.)


The day I started all this, I began with Bing Crosby and David Bowie's "Little Drummer Boy (Peace on Earth)." (Along with a bonus song, the scarily accurate Funny or Die recreation of the performance starring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly.)

I'll bring you some more songs as the month progresses.
Peace.

Ghosts of Christmas haunt ‘Batman Noel’

As the new original graphic novel “Batman Noel” opens, Gotham City’s dark knight is tracking a petty criminal named Bob through the snowy streets on Christmas Eve.

Bob is just trying to scrape by, running errands for the Joker so he can provide for his sick son. But while Joker seems the obvious “Scrooge” in this retelling of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” it is Batman who ends up being visited by specters. Indeed, in Bob’s world, Batman’s alter ego Bruce Wayne is the penny-pincher who begrudgingly gives him Christmas day off.

This version of the Batman is a weary veteran, emotionally scarred by his war on crime. He has lost his compassion for the victims he once swore to protect, focusing instead on winning the war at any cost. He has isolated himself from his friends and distanced himself from the common people of his city. All he cares about is the bottom line, and he will sacrifice anyone to achieve his ends — even the safety of a sickly child.

The story of “Batman Noel” (hardcover, 112 pages, $22.99) uses “A Christmas Carol” as the bones for a desperate adventure tale exploring what it means to be a hero. Batman must come to terms with his past, present and future as he battles villains from the campy 1960s to the dark and brooding menaces of today.

Download a preview of the book here.

It’s a familiar trope to longtime comic book readers to see their heroes involved in holiday-themed adventures, but this goes one better. “Batman Noel” gives readers a realistic variation on the Dark Knight (the designs are very similar to the current movie incarnation), as well as his enemies and allies from different eras of his career. Robin, Catwoman, Superman and Joker make appearances, filling roles similar to characters in Dickens’ tale.

This fast-paced and beautifully illustrated book was written and drawn by Lee Bermejo, who also illustrated the best-selling “Joker” graphic novel with writer Brian Azzarello in 2008. His Superman story in “Wednesday Comics” was serialized in USA Today.

The story doesn’t require an encyclopedic knowledge of the characters, and it doesn’t get bogged down by their negative aspects. There’s more gravy than grave about it, Dickens might say. Rather, it’s a good introduction to one man’s interpretation of the icons, a story anyone with passing interest in comics will enjoy, and a real gift for a true fan.

Between There

I'm pretty happy with Between There, a new anthology that was just released, containing my sci-fi ghost story "Space Oddity," as well as a poem by my son. There are stories by editor Anthony Buoni, GCSC professor Lynn Wallace, and several others. It's available through Pulpwood Press, or via Amazon.com here.

Tuesday, I read my story at the Writers Gallery meeting at The Purple Grape. Anthony read his story as well.


That night I also got some details regarding a Christmas Eve performance I was asked to participate in at Northstar Church. Apparently, the folks putting the event together like my "grandfatherly" reading voice and want me to narrate a portion of the show; they will dress me in a smoking jacket, give me a pipe as a prop and have me sit in an easy chair to read while the band goes through some music and some original paintings are projected on a big screen.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Meanwhile, I'm still behind the curve on my NaNoWriMo project. I hope to close the gap a bit tonight. Wish me luck.

Peace.

‘Nutcracker’ has proved irresistible

One of my earliest Christmas memories is watching a television program with my mother — a musical presentation of The Nutcracker, which is rendered in my recollection in glorious fuzzy black-andwhite, though we may have had a color TV at the time.

(I’m sure I recall watching Star Trek during that same era in color.)

The particular images that linger from that night’s show are of the young heroine being forcibly separated from her heroic prince by the evil mice; the prince leaping and swinging his wide scimitar to scatter the wicked rodents; and, yes, the scores of beautiful, synchronized dancing women.

Who could say no to sugarplum fairies?

Apparently, there were some who could. Critics hated The Nutcracker ballet when it debuted in 1892. Its creator, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, (already renowned for his Swan Lake in 1877) wrote friends that "the periodicals" were "carving up" his new creation like a Christmas duck.

Here’s an excerpt from one of the ballet’s first reviews (Dec. 8, 1892), as quoted on the Web site www.nutcracker.com: "The Nutcracker cannot in any event be called a ballet … the production of such ‘spectacles’ is an insult. ... God grant that similar failed experiments do not happen often."

Thank goodness that newspaper writers aren’t the sole arbiters of good taste and cultural refinement, and that clearer-headed audiences continued to support the ballet.

The St. Petersburg Classic Russian Nutcracker will be presented Dec 18, 2010 (Sat) 7:30 PM at the Panama City Marina Civic Center, presented by Willis Ballet and featuring The Saint-Petersburg Classic Ballet Theatre of Marina Medvetskaya.

Then, Moscow Ballet's "GREAT RUSSIAN NUTCRACKER" will be Dec 29, 2010 (Wed) 7:30 PM at the Marina Civic Center, with director Vladimir Troschenko and principal dancers Cristina & Alexi Terentieva. This "spectacle" will feature several vignettes with local children who have practiced for their roles at area dance academies. Tour officials say that, over the course of their various tours, they have given more than 45,000 children a chance to perform with a professional production.

That’s a lot of sugarplum fairies — and full-color Christmas memories.

Peace.

(The preceding was originally written in advance of a Nutcracker performance in 2004 and was my Undercurrents column for Dec. 4 of that year. It has been edited to include updated performance information.)

Suffer not the little children

Bailey went to see Santa Claus on Tuesday night.

The 4-year-old girl had been excited all day, even though she had just seen Santa at her church preschool only the week before. It’s not like you can get too much Santa Claus this time of year, though.

She had posed for a photo with him that day, too — she had sat on one of his knees and her best friend, Haley, had perched on his other knee. (They had suspected at first that he might not be the real Santa, but when their teacher pulled on his beard he said "Ouch," so they knew he was real!)

Tuesday, Bailey’s mother dressed her up for her visit to the mall in Pensacola, south of where they lived. She would sit on his knee again, tell him what she wanted for Christmas, and have her picture taken once more.

That morning, she played with Haley at preschool — just the two of them, so much to the exclusion of other children that Haley’s mother noticed and actually wondered if they would always be such fast friends.

And then Bailey went off to see Santa Claus. Her dad met them there and stayed behind to do some Christmas shopping when Bailey and her mother headed home.

Wednesday morning, Haley’s mother took Haley to preschool only to find that the preschool was closed. The teachers spoke to the parents, and the children were sent home. The parents were not sure what to say.

It seems that, at about the same time Bailey was whispering her secret wishes to a right jolly old elf on Tuesday evening, a man was having another drink at a watering hole north of Pensacola. He’d been drinking since noon.

At about the time Bailey and her mom left the mall on their way north and home, the man left the bar, headed south. He drove southward in the northbound lanes of a divided highway. He did not have his headlights turned on. It was nighttime.

Bailey died when the man’s car struck her mother’s car.

So on Wednesday morning, Bailey’s mother was conscious and in fair condition in a Pensacola hospital. So was her 1-year-old sister, Abigail, who was also in the car.

And Haley’s mother was trying to figure out how to tell a 4-yearold that her best friend was dead and what that meant — how to keep Santa Claus out of it — how to get through the morning without just holding her daughter and crying and not ever leaving the house again.

Because it wasn’t just Santa Claus that Bailey went to see on Tuesday, and it was Bailey they never would see again.

Peace.

(The preceding was my Undercurrents column for Dec. 19, 2004.)

Christmas angels get water wings

(The following was my Undercurrents column for Dec. 17, 2006.)

Pardon me for being blunt, but part of the little boy’s brain was missing.
I mean, I can only surmise that condition because of the shape of his skull — concave on the right, like a grassy hillside where the earth below has been eroded and the surface collapses into the new shape.

He was happy, and he told me so, in words as well as the grin that spread across his face. Floating in the swimming pool at Gulf Coast Community College, the child splashed and kicked with the help of a man who supported him in the water.

And he was surrounded by other disabled children, who squealed and giggled with the adults who helped them enjoy the college pool. They tossed balls and brightly colored noodles and splashed water in each other’s faces.

I looked and saw. I listened and heard. I felt it in the center of my chest.

This was a happy place and time, where kids felt released from the limitations with which they’d been born or into which circumstance had rendered them. For an hour last Wednesday, they were free.

The children had entered the natatorium confined to wheelchairs or walking with the aid of teachers, parents and volunteers. They soon were liberated from the bonds of gravity, buoyed by the warm water and the full attention of their helpers. Lifeguards stood by just in case.

The noise of laughter, shouts of joy and splashing built to a roar. I asked people to step outside for interviews because of the cacophony. Outside the building, a grown man tried not to cry when he talked about the importance of this day. I understood what he was saying, even when words failed.

For 15 years, the college has hosted an annual Christmas swimming party for disabled students from Springfield Elementary School. I hadn’t been here in a while, as my duties changed over the years, and I was glad to have returned.

I first covered the event in 1995, its fourth year. GCCC President Bob McSpadden had to sit out the fun that year because of surgery on his arm. This year, as McSpadden faces his upcoming retirement, it was a leg problem that kept him out of the pool. Most Christmases, you could find him in the middle of it.

“This is when Christmas really starts for us,” McSpadden said that first time I visited. “This is what sets the mood.”

For about 20 children — and as many adults — Wednesday’s party set a mood of comfort and joy.

Peace.

It’s beginning to sound a lot like Christmas

(The following was my Undercurrents column for December 2, 2007.)

Music is a marvelous timetravel device. In a few notes, it can transport you to a specific place and era, resurrect all the minute sensory data you thought you’d forgotten and evoke the emotions related to those old memories. Christmas music seems especially effective for conjuring specific moments in life. These are the songs and the singers that take me back:

Gene Autry singing “Rudolph,” “Up on the Housetop,” or “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” Suddenly, I’m 4 or 5, and we live in a little wooden house in Century. Santa brings me

Matt Mason astronaut toys, Hot Wheels and a cowboy dress-up set. There’s a gas heater in the living room and “Lassie” on the TV.

Judy Garland singing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” I’m at Grandma Massey’s house, 5 or 6 years old. I get a Batman play set, and I’m on the carpet with Uncle Joe, who’s playing the role of the villains attacking the Batcave. There’s a scent of evergreen and cakes. Later, I see the TV reports about Santa being tracked by NORAD.

The Ray Conniff Singers. A staple of holiday music throughout my life, hearing them makes me think of baking and decorating sugar cookies with my mom and sister. We’re not yet teens. Mom has a sugar-frosting recipe like no one else.

Just about any of the Carpenters’ Christmas songs. Hear them again and I’m newly married, and we live in a two-room cottage in Gainesville. It’s a cold winter. We use the stove to warm the place each morning because we have no heat. No money either, so we spend the weeks prior to Christmas window shopping for each other and listening to the few cassette tapes we have, including “Christmas Portrait.”

The Partridge Family singing “My Christmas Card to You.” I’m 6 or 7, and I think Joe gave me this record. I join the Partridge Family fan club, using a card that came with the album. I like zipper-front shirts and think Bobby Sherman is cooler than David Cassidy. I have a Bobby Sherman lunch box, which will be replaced by a UFO lunchbox next year.

These days, I play this on CD. It irritates my daughter, or at least she claims it does. But I’ve also caught her singing, “To you and all your family, your neighbors and your friends …,” and I wonder what she will recall when she hears certain songs in Christmastimes to come.

Peace.

Last minute gift-buying ideas abound

(The following was my Undercurrents column for Dec. 23, 2007.)

So I turned to blog readers this week for some help. A typical husband, I was beginning to get nervous about the approaching holiday deadline, considering the fact I hadn’t yet bought anything for my long-suffering spouse. I expected to be frantic in the aisles of Bay County’s retail stores before the weekend arrived.

(Universities actually have done studies of this phenomenon. I looked it up on the Internet, so it must be true. They found that women are just as likely to be in checkout lanes on Dec. 24 as men are. However, women are more likely to be buying that little something extra to make their giftgiving that much more special, while men are just getting starting and have no idea where to begin.)

And whose fault was it other than mine? My wife’s, of course. I blame her. It’s for her that I’m shopping, after all, and it’s difficult for a man to go into a store without a target in sight.

I mean, I can put you together a list of stuff to purchase for me in various price ranges at a moment’s notice. I’m shallow and materialistic like that.

But all the wife ever says when I ask her what she’d like for Christmas is mushy stuff. Relationship stuff. Huggy-kissy-snuggly stuff. Stuff you can’t really stuff in a stocking, you know, or take back to the store for a refund later when you change your mind.

So I asked, “What is it with women? What do women want?”

Robbyn responded that I should buy her an event: a theater or symphony performance, art, a class, a dinner cruise with dancing. “… The sweet thought, coupled with spending time with you (and knowing you wanted to spend time with her) will score you big points!”

Tina suggested having a star named after her at starregistry.com, or using our personal inside jokes as a starting point for a special present. “Yes, women are difficult to buy for. We don’t just want stuff. Women want a summation of your feelings in a box with a bow.”

Lou said to get show tickets or stuff her stocking “with little things you know your wife likes — perfume, candy, fluffy socks, lingerie, jewelry, etc.”

And Bob suggested something by Bob Dylan. (I suspect Bob is less successful with women than I am.)

Finally, my dentist suggested I visit Victoria’s Secret. He also said the first thing to do once inside the store is find a clerk to assist me. Otherwise, I’m liable to get some funny looks if I just browse around. (Dentists are especially reliable regarding Christmas advice; remember, Hermey the misfit elf became a dentist.)

I hope this was as helpful to you as it was to me.

Merry Christmas.

Spirit of Christmas lives on

(The following was my Undercurrents column for Dec. 14, 2008.)

For 43 years, give or take, my Christmas Eve was spent with — and in the home of — my maternal grandmother, Mazie Massey. My personal definition of the holiday was molded from those experiences and captured in innumerable photos around her Christmas tree.

Christmas Day was for my other grandmother, and in later years we visited my in-laws on that day, too. But Christmas Eve was Grandma Massey’s time.

There were fireworks launched in the field behind the house. Fondue was arranged by Aunt Wendy. Trays of veggies, plates of cookies, bowls of fudge, platters of pie, slices of cake. Homemade fruitcake if you liked that. Pictures of the piles of presents around the tree, as her children, grandchildren, cousins, friends and neighbors came over for the evening. (And in the later years, add spouses and great-grandkids to the roster.)

She had a gift for making children happy, for making each one of them feel like they were special. Every child who came into her house on a Christmas Eve could tell you how she doted on them, held them in her arms and made them feel loved.

The tree was most often covered in red lights, with angels and dolls and little birds throughout. She began collecting “Gone with the Wind” ornaments in recent years, and we bought her a new one just last Christmas.

She insisted on getting a photo of the tree each year. It made her happy to see the mad stack of gifts and the littlest children with their eyes full of wonder and anticipation.

In my childhood and young adult years, Grandma’s house was only a couple of miles away from wherever I was living. For the last 15 years, it’s been a little more of a trip, but we always made it. The first Christmas Eve I lived in Panama City, my car broke down on the way to Grandma’s house, and my Uncle Joe drove all the way to DeFuniak Springs to meet me where the tow truck had left me and take me home to Century.

There were only a few times we didn’t go to Grandma’s for the eve. Once in my childhood, we stayed with my paternal grandmother, and just a couple of years ago, as Grandma’s house was being renovated after it was damaged by Hurricane Dennis, Christmas Eve was at my mother’s house.

We even spent Christmas Eve at Grandma’s house one year when she was off visiting my cousins in Hawaii. A freak cold snap froze the pipes in an old house we lived in, so we carted the presents to her house, and we stayed the night there. I recall putting together toys for my toddling little boy with the help of my sister and brother-in-law.

No one lives in Grandma’s house these days. She left us before the spring came, after a long and difficult illness. Her little Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler ornaments hang on our family tree this year.

We’ll take pictures, and we’ll think of her.

Peace.