Categories: uncategorized
Date: 29 December 2004 19:16:31
There's an old-fashioned Christmas, and then there's a REALLY old-fashioned Christmas...
I like to think back to Christmas of 1991. (The only reason I can pinpont the year is because I was about five months pregnant, and youngest son was born in the spring of 1992.)
You'd think Iowa, Midwestern State that she is, would be flat. "...Where the wind goes sweepin' down the plains" would seem as appropriate for Iowa as for Oklahoma. Sioux City was called "Little Chicago" for many years and for many reasons, but chief of them in my mind would be the almost constant wind.
Seems there'd have been endless, fairly flat, autumn-golden prairie all around, yes? Undisturbed but for the occasional Lakota hunter and little pigtailed settler girls in covered wagons, yeah?
But -- nope. There's hills under that thar gold. Some of them actually wooded and home to deer, foxes, badgers, woodchucks, skunks, coons, 'possums, the occasional wandering bear or moose... Hee, no wonder I felt at home there. ( http://www.nfinity.com/~exile/panorama.htm )
There was snow on the ground on the cleared hills of the Trobaugh's horse pastures, but broad swathes of golden grass were windblown bare between the drifts. I took a bow saw, one of the kids afoot, and my pregnant tummy out there after a Christmas tree.
The evergreens growing wild on those hills were junipers. They were not often a traditional Christmas tree shape, but I don't know how much of that was due to the species and how much to the constant winds and nibbling Percherons. ( http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/horses/percheron/ )
The little dormant trees were a dark rich reddish color, somewhere between burgundy, mahogany and magenta. We found one, about 6 feet tall and a nice shape, and I sawed it off close to the ground.
So then we trudged back to the farmhouse, me and my saw and my kid and my belly, my tree trailing behind. I can't recall whether I stuffed it bottom-first into my car trunk, or whether I lashed it to the roof, but I got it home somehow. Sans horse apples, even!
We sat it up in its bucket of water in the warm little apartment, and it soon turned a deep dark forest green. We decorated it with all hand-made ornaments, paper snowflakes, candy canes and crochetted yarn chains in Christmas colors. We could not have afforded to buy very many decorations, so we made a virtue of necessity with the homemade stuff. It was nice, and it was our very own tree, reward of our own hiking and hacking, harvesting and hauling.
That was an old-fashioned Christmas.
This Christmas, on the other hand, was even more old-fashioned. A Dark Ages Christmas...
No gaudy decor for us this year, only a simple display of Christmas cards. And all day Christmas Eve, the Spouse was doing the caveman/hunter thing, scouting for mushrooms and heaping up the charcoal and pecan in the smoker to roast the Christmas beasts.
He is a dedicated smoker. He loves to slip a beef roast or a rack of mushrooms into his shiny silver smoker and light 'er up.
In this case it was a pork butt roast and a young turkey I'd stuffed with green onion sausage.
He was up and down all night long, stuffing in more charcoal or more wet mesquite or hickory or pecan, keeping the temperature high and the smoke plentiful.
It started to sleet late afternoon Christmas Eve. He worried about the cold and the ice slowing down the meat.
So, about dark, he hauled his shiny silver smoky smoker off the back patio, into the back door and through the living room to the carport out front.
The sleet slanted down, little round clear balls of ice bouncing about. The smoker smoked. The eve of Christmas wore on.
Come Christmas Morning, the turkey needed a little high heat in my oven, just to raise the stuffing temperature up to 180 degrees F. No problem, says I -- but then the power went out.
So off the rapidly cooling Tom Turkey goes, to huddle in my sister's oven across the street -- her power company had made better preparation against the ice storm than mine, I suppose.
The veggies were warmed up in my microwave, powered by a heavy duty cord stretched across to said sister's carport.
Christmas Day grew dimmer and dimmer. Snow was coming, every low-bellied cotton-fluff cloud said so.
Mom-in-law and I sat around and murmured sleepily at each other with a candle and a cup of tea. (She'd not have been better off at her house in the next little community, since her power went off that morning as well.) The sleepy grey twilight of the day tiptoed through my oak tree and into my dining room window. The candles on the table were brighter.
Home came the triumphant turkey. Home from Sister's oven came the piping hot sweet potatoes, eagerly anticipating each person's plate, waiting to be dressed in butter and cinnamon and nutmeg.
The light grew dimmer still.
We gathered, six of us, around the candlelit table, and feasted on succulent smoky stuff. Hulking furry beasts outdoors made wintery noises as the sleet turned to fluffy wet snowflakes. Well, hulking furry neighbor boys made beastly noises, anyway.
Felt all Medieval, that did.
Ours is a well-insulated house, no need for the air conditioner or the heater on all but the most extreme days. It was getting a bit nippy, though, well below freezing out there and snow falling past lunchtime and into the evening. Were wore more clothing than usual. I tucked a furry blanket around Grandma's knees.
Grandpa went on to his job, usually a 45 minute drive to the Mississippi River. Heaven knew what it would take him that day, with all the ice and snow and inexperienced Southern drivers. He made it just fine -- and found that his co-worker would have no trouble getting there to replace him, next shift, 'cause the poor man couldn't even get home after the previous shift. The State Police had closed all the ice-coated bridges. He had to stay there. Thank goodness they work in a hotel...
Youngest boy had a good time building snowmen -- he'd been that little one tucked in under my waistband, when I made the Christmas tree pilgrimage in '91. We moved back here from the Great White North to the Sunny South in 1995, so he really had his first memorable snow experience just now, this Christmas Day. He pestered some button eyes from me, and a carrot nose from left-hand neighborlady. Nephew stayed out with him, turning up his nose at his own warm and well-lit house and his father's deep-fried turkey, in favor of (*gasp*) building a snowman! Yay!
The dim day grew brighter after a thin layer of snow blanketed our lawns. Neighbors wandered about chatting -- those of us on my side of the street had no power and were glad to get out into some light for a bit. Right-side neighborlady has promised us a photo of the boys and their LSU-capped snow buddy, built up on a car hood. That will be a good one to have, since one of the neighbor boys has already entered high school, and the other was home on leave from the Army. They won't be boys frolicking in the snow much longer, will they?
My boy, my nephew and the buddy boys between them managed to put a snowball through the front bedroom window. I consoled myself with the idea that I was more fond of the snowball than of the BB's they've put through various other windows.
Second snowman was much more substantial, built in the clear area between my carport and neighbor's Louisiana Iris bed. The boys got tired of wandering about carrying pails of snow, however, so before he even grew a proper snowman's head, they used him for a tackling dummy. Ah, well, I guess un bonhomme de neige ain't guaranteed a long life, anyhow.
Grandma eventually was ferried home by her son, my smoky spouse. He made sure her power was on and heaters working, and then he came home to our quiet, dim, candlelit house. I think the power came on late in the night... But, you know what? I never really missed it...
That turkey of his sure came out well. I'm still not tired of it. I make a new turkey salad every day. And the leftover green beans, so bright green, so squeaky between the teeth -- they have had a new, if brief, life, and have made some very appreciative friends, as the traditional Green Bean Casserole with Mushroom Sauce and Fried Onion Topping. Mmmmmmm...
And there's still one lonely sweet potato in the refrigerator. I think I will go home now to have lunch with it, and console it with hot butter, cinnamon and nutmeg.