This is a picture of main street of my little town of Cherokee, Iowa when I was just a little girl. It was all decked out for Christmas. I can remember getting thirty-five cents a week allowance when I was ten years old. I saved a quarter every week and spent the dime on a movie with popcorn on Saturday afternoons if I was lucky enough to get to go. I can remember my daddy telling me that he would match the money I saved. He was a bit shocked when I showed him all the money I had saved towards my Christmas shopping spree. I have a feeling he was hard put to match that money now that I look back at it.
We had a J.C.Penny store on the right hand side of main street. I found my mama a beautiful house dress for just a little over two dollars. It was pink. She was so pleased. I bought my daddy a tie that was red with a yellow horn on it. He wore it to church and received a lot of ribbing for his flashy tie. In those days men wore a lot of black, brown and navy. That tie was still in my mother's dresser drawer when she moved to the nursing home. Tears.
I remember a Christmas that I had two gifts under the tree. One was big and one was very very small. I really wanted to open the big one and save the little one for Christmas morning, but I could tell my mama wanted me to open the little one. She kept saying, "It is said that little packages often contain large gifts." Well, I opened it. It was a Timex watch. She had wanted me to wear it to the Christmas Eve program. It didn't work. Sad faces. Tears.
As time went on my Christmas memories were happy and sad. Missing family members started being the norm instead of the exception. When I was a teenager, I lost both of my grandparents.
I married at a very young age and Christmas time found me with seven dollars to spend. There was a store that was closing in my little village. I spent a quarter on a big yellow mixing bowl. I put a box cake mix in it and wrapped it for my mother. She often talked about that mixing bowl. When I cleaned out her cupboards that mixing bowl had been well used. It was rubber and showed the use it had had over the years.
Now I talk about the lean years when my children were little. Poor was the word. Poor but oh so very happy with my little family of two children and a loving husband and father. One year I had ten dollars to spend on each of my children. Then and now nothing has changed. If you spend ten dollars or a hundred, the children would count how many packages they each had. Everything was fine if they each had the same "count" they called it. That year they each got ten gifts; you see the trend?
Today I watched the news on television which of course, we didn't have when I was a child. I told my husband this morning I don't think I even knew what war was until I was a young adult. I was watching a city that had been bombed beyond recognition because it was a Christian city and disposable and easy to claim.
I can remember watching Edward R. Merle on the news that started before the movies, but really I can remember the cigarette he was smoking rather than the content of his news. I had never seen anyone smoke a cigarette except our neighbor man.
Now today I again am a combination of sad and happy. My Christmas will be bittersweet because I have company coming for the holidays, but know of a small homeless child that probably won't have a Christmas because of poor decision making of some of her family members. I have put the word out, so Santa if you hear me and do in fact make wishes come true, please make the homeless a better day than yesterday and tomorrow a better day yet.
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