Christmas Memories

My best Christmas memories are of my childhood in the Fifties. Our family lived in a second floor apartment building on Washington Avenue in Downingtown, Pennsylvania. Our rent was $22.50 a month, a fact my Mother often repeated.

I had (have) two younger brothers. Our apartment had a "front" room (living room) where my Mother and father would place our always scrawny Christmas tree.  Unfortunately I do not have any pictures of that tree.  My Mother never thought to take pictures of her boys with the Christmas tree. It wasn't until I got a camera for Christmas when I was eleven years old that I started to take pictures. By then we had moved to a different second floor apartment on Boot Road in Downingtown.

The "front" room was literally in the front of our apartment. Moving towards the back of our apartment was a bathroom, then a kitchen, then two adjoining bedrooms in the back of the apartment.  Most if not all of the family activity was conducted around the kitchen table.  This was the Fifties. Think Ralph Kramden and Alice in "The Honeymooners."

One indelible and warm memory I will always remember are the colorful bubble lights on our Christmas tree. Also the silver tinsel, which gave a shimmering effect on the tree.  We finished the decorations with unadorned color bulbs, one of which was always guaranteed to fall and shatter in many pieces. And of course there was the delightful evergreen smell. Oh the magic of Christmas!

I don't remember too much about gifts other than being disappointed when we received clothes, which I didn't consider a real Christmas present. But what I do remember was the year I asked for a train set. Santa brought me a train set but my Mother told me that the train set was for "all you boys."  What?  Share?  How can you share a train set?

Well, we tried.  I took over the engine (of course since I was the oldest).  My next younger brother Isaac took the three middle cars. My youngest brother John took the caboose. I don't need to tell you this arrangement didn't work.  We tried, we really tried but what Mom created with this "share" direction was three very disappointed young boys.  

I don't know what happened to that train set. It was a Lionel train set. Smoke blew out the smoke stack of the engine. It worked but my brothers and I didn't work well together.  Mom had good intentions but her solution to having little money for Christmas gifts for three young boys didn't work out.  

The next year we moved to Boot Road, into another second floor apartment. This time I asked for a camera.  I got one! The rest is history. Yesterday I backed up my 94,385 photos to an external hard drive, finally!   

My brothers John and Isaac with their new bikes - 1953 - I got my Kodak camera - no charing this Christmas!

My Best Christmas Present

Me wrapping Christmas presents at our Pennsauken, NJ apartment - 1964

Well folks, here we are finally at Christmas Eve.  Came around pretty fast again this year didn't it?  

On Christmas Eve I often think of my Christmases past.  Like most kids growing up in the Fifties, I believed in Santa Claus and really thought I was going to get what I wanted if I was a good boy all the year.  Most of the year I was a Good Little Boy, at least the months leading up to Christmas.  I was hoping that Santa had a short memory.

Santa Claus

Of course I was always disappointed on Christmas morning when I open my presents to find a pair of gloves, underwear and maybe a toy or two. One Christmas I was especially disappointed.  I wanted an electric train in the WORST way.  Since I was the oldest of my parents three boys, I thought I would be the American Flyer electric train set.  

The year was 1952. I was eleven years old.  I could hardly sleep on Christmas Eve.  At dawn's early light I go tearing into the front room (we lived at a second floor apartment building on 120 Washington Avenue in Downingtown, Pennsylvania; a suburban town of 5,000 souls west of Philadelphia).  

Me (the beanpole in the center) and my "competition", my two little brothers in 1953

I see the HUGE package under our skimpy tree.  THAT MUST BE IT!  That package surely couldn't contain more clothes.  I pull the package towards me while my brothers Isaac and John stand behind me in their pajamas. But before I open the package my Mom says "This is for ALL YOU BOYS".  Well, I didn't know the term "WTF?" then but I thought the equivalent of it.  FOR ALL OF US?  WHAT?  

I open the package. Yes, it is indeed the American Flyer Electric Train set.......FOR ALL OF US.  Now exactly how was this going to work out? 

Of course right off the bat, while Disney cartoons are playing on our black and white, 15 inch Philco TV, I get into a dispute with my brothers as to who was going to put this train together and run it.  This was terrible!  What was my Mother thinking?

She resolved the problem of "sharing."  I was to get the engine and coal car.  Isaac, the middle son, was to get the two middle boxcars and the tracks.  John was to get the next to last box car and caboose and the electrical switch box.  

So how did this work?  Of COURSE IT DIDN'T WORK. This was one of the worst decisions my Mother ever made.  To say I was a "bit" unhappy wasn't the least of it.  I was VERY unhappy, and that's saying something because I was generally a very happy kid.  

Me at 10 years old - the happy little fisherman with my worm box - 1951

Long story short, I gave up the train to my brothers.  They could have it.  That was the Christmas I went without.  

Fast forward to Christmas 1969 with My Bill.  I was working in center city Philadelphia at that time.  At lunchtime, I used to visit an art store on Chestnut Street. One painting I admired greatly was a ship sailing in the ocean.  Oh how I loved that painting.  

I wanted that painting so bad but couldn't afford it because it cost $250.00.  I was only making about $80 a week at the bank.  That was almost a month's pay for me.  Just.....could.....not.....afford.....it.

Christmas 1969 rolls around.  Bill and I return from spending Christmas Day with my parents in Downingtown. Our tradition was to open our presents to each other on Christmas Day Evening.  

I see this big package on the coffee table in our living room at our small townhouse on Naudain Street in Philadelphia.  "What could THAT be?"  

I saved that package for last.  When it came time to open it I was truly flabbergasted.  WOW!  For the first time in my life Santa actually brought me something that I wanted and LIKED!  My life was complete now.

I couldn't thank Bill enough.  So this is what it feels like?  I felt just like all those people in the movies and commercials who open their presents and are truly surprised. SUPER!  

Yes, that's me in my "western outfit and cigar (don't ask) - check out the painting over the fireplace - 1971

I hung that magnificent painting over our fireplace in the living room at our house in Philadelphia.  Over the years that painting has always occupied a prominent place wherever we lived.  Now it hangs over my bed in my bedroom.  Every afternoon before I take my daily nap and every night before I go to sleep I look at that ship "sailing the blue ocean" and get a familiar warm, comfortable feeling remembering back to that Christmas that Santa came through.

Merry Christmas!

Me with my Best Christmas Present - December 23, 2012

Me - 1971 - Philadelphia

Remember the Oscar Wilde story "The Picture of Dorian Gray".  That's the story where the picture of the man aged but the man didn't age.  This is the opposite, "The Picture of Ron."  The man ages but the picture doesn't  Ah yes, Fleeting Youth.  How sweet it was. 

Bill in our Philadelphia living room, front of the fireplace with the wonderful Christmas present - 1970

Twas The Night Before........

Ny first Christmas with Bill - 1964
Pennsauken, New Jersey

Or something like that.  Only a few more days to go before Santa dumps his load (or something like that). It's one of those days folks. 

Original photo - oh whatever happened to that sweater - they don't make them like that anymore

It doesn't feel much like Christmas this year.  No, I'm not a "Bah Humbug" kind of guy, it's just that each year Christmas seems to come to early and then, before you know it, Christmas is gone and the Mummers are marching down Broad Street Philadelphia in the cold winds of the new year.  

Female impersonator Philadelphia Mummers Parade - 1965
Back when female impersonation was dangerous

Me, yes in "bank drag" (overcoat and horn rimmed glasses) at the Philadelphia Mummers Parade 1965

Then comes the Big Gray Chill, the bitter cold monochrome months of January, February and March.  The "just get through it" months of mid winter.  The "I hope it doesn't snow two feet" months.    

When I was a kind, which was a LONG time ago, Christmas couldn't come fast enough.  Such was the glittery promise of the magic of getting free things.  Invariably I was always disappointed with my "take" but I still remember my favorite Christmas.  That was the Christmas of 1954 when I was twelve years old, I received my first camera. Oh sure, I know what some of my faithful blog followers are thinking "So that's when it ALL STARTED with Ron and HIS CAMERA."  Yep, that is when it started.  Even then, at the tender age of a dozen years I started clicking away.  My year each younger brothers John and Isaac were the involuntary subjects of many of my first photo assaults.  

My brothers Isaac, John and our pets Bobby (the cat) and Sam (the dog) - Christmas - 1954

My camera was one of those inexpensive Kodak Brownie cameras. I took a lot of pictures for a Fifties teenager but, looking back from my vantage point now, not near as many as I wish I had taken.  Perhaps the main reason I didn't take more pictures was that it was just too darn expensive.  To take an eight picture role, I had to buy the film and then get it developed. I forget exactly what the film cost but I know getting it processed was usually a couple of dollars and took at least a week of anxious anticipation waiting (to see "if they came out") until I got the developed pictures back from the Sam Charles News Agency where I took them for developing.  

The Charles News Agency (on the left) Downingtown, PA - 1970 (the earliest I could get a picture - I bicycled this street (Lancaster Avenue, Route 30) from 1954 to 1959 - where I grew up

The only known picture of my on my newspaper bicycle - one of my brothers took this picture - don't blame me - 1954

I was a newspaper boy back in those days and earn about $5.00 a week, which after what I spent on candy and comic books; didn't leave a whole lot left for buying and developing film.  But I did manage to take quite a few pictures for a Fifties teenager, more than almost all of my friends and classmates I daresay.  

"Bobby" - 1954 - my first and only cat pet - a willing photo subject