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From 7H porch the sunsets vary, depending on numerous factors, season, weather, whether there are clouds - - I try to get a photo when we have especially striking sunsets, as last evening.
Though winter is just a couple weeks away, Monday evening was warm, clear, and just right for being outside on the porch with a glass of ice cold barley tea from Japan.
For years it was with a glass of red, but because, evidently, something about all my heart meds has started interfering with enjoyment of wine, or popping a cold one, or even my Sunday martini, it's ice water these days, or cold barley tea. Fine by me though, age 87 and still waking up mornings.
Yesterday we got the Christmas Tree box down from its place on a high shelf in the closet and set it up. Linda got as far as our putting the star on top.
Linda enjoys decorating it, I don't especially any more, I rehearse memories, all of which have been shared here in years past.
We always did our Christmas Tree hunt the Sunday afternoon before Christmas, driving around on the rutted sandy but packed dirt roads among the scrub oaks and little pine trees across Hathaway Bridge out toward Philips Inlet off US98, Panama City Beach. In the 1940s there was nothing out that way but sand, scrub oaks, and pines waiting to be cut for Christmas Trees. Five of us in the car, father driving, Mama in the front seat, sometimes me also. Or I might be in the back seat with Gina and Walt.
We drove and drove, everybody looking at each tree we passed and commenting. My recollection is that Gina usually had the final say on whether a tree was too one-sided or round enough to be Just the One.
When the One was agreed on, our father, me when I grew old enough, took the axe or saw that was in the trunk of the car, and cut it down. Stuffed it in the car trunk, tied the trunk lid down with twine, and headed home.
Back home, at some point it had become my job to make a Christmas Tree Stand of 1x4 boards. After Christmas the tree was carried up to the back alley and left standing, icicles still clinging, for the garbage truck, but early I tired of making a new stand and so knocked the stand off and stored it under the house. In the center, a long nail driven into the tree trunk, the tree wired to the four arms of the stand for stability.
In the house, excitement going through beloved Christmas tree decorations that were family members every December. Me going through the light strings, removing and screwing in light bulbs until I got each string to light up. Some argument with Gina about whether, the final decorating step, she would hang each icicle carefully, or I could stand back and throw them on in clumps.
December 1947 I did not get to go on the Christmas Tree Hunt, because I was in Adams Hospital for appendectomy, surgery done by Dr Powell Adams, our father's friend from their years at Bay High together. My father or mother phoned him, he came to the house, examined me, picked me up and carried me to his car and took me to the hospital. Yes, I remember his car, a new gray 1947 Chevrolet Fleetmaster club coupe.
No Porsches for Panama City doctors in those days. Scotty's mother drove a Buick, but his father Dr Don Fraser drove a black Chevrolet club coupe just like Dr Powell's gray one. Louise Lewis' father, Dr Lingo, who lived on Massalina Drive next door to Robert, drove, my recollection, a black 1938 Chevrolet coach (two door sedan).
There are still Christmas Tree ornament beloveds of course. Close-up pictures maybe as the Tree gets decorated.
In my Time, a Christmas Tree was REAL, and it was pine, and you went out in the woods somewhere in Bay County and cut it yourself. I remember being appalled the first time I heard someone say they bought their Christmas Tree. Except that for my hospital stay that Christmas 1947, Mama bought a ceramic tree, about 18 inches tall, electric plug in, irridescent white, with a new marvel, bubble lights. Everybody on the hospital staff came by my room to look at my tree. It was in the family for years. I have no idea whatever happened to it.
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