I have been told I have a remarkable memory, and I’ll humbly admit that it is true. However…it is slipping.
Lots of entries here at The Holy Bee of Ephesus are autobiographical reminiscences, and I have found recently as I’m writing them that I’m straining to remember dates and details that were once clear as day. My “steel trap” memory (my Mom’s description) is getting rusty.
Like many people, some of my favorite memories are of Christmas, and I find that I remember Christmases of my early childhood better than those of just a few years ago. This may be due to never spending more than a few Christmases in any one house. Mom and Dad were always renters instead of owners, because Mom often grew bored or dissatisfied with houses, and we would frequently pack up and move (sometimes only a few blocks.) I liked it because moving was an adventure, and it gave each Christmas a unique feel and flavor, but even those once-vivid childhood Christmases are starting to fade and go a little sepia-toned…so I figured I’d better get to writing before they are gone from my brain cells for good.
Woodland, California is a mid-sized town about twenty miles northwest of the state capital of Sacramento. My grandparents settled there when they came from Oklahoma back around 1940, and Woodland and its smaller, semi-rural satellite towns (Esparto, Yolo, Winters, etc.) were my extended family’s home base for more than fifty years.
My first four Christmases were spent in four different houses, but in September of 1978, we settled down for awhile. A big, Spanish-style adobe house on the corner of First Street and Craig Avenue in one of the older sections of “historic Woodland” was my home for my fourth, fifth, and sixth birthdays (on December 3), and the first Christmases that I really remember.
The house on First Street, New Year’s Day, 1980. Note the retired Christmas tree in the gutter.
The house on First Street as it appears today. The thick shrubbery under the dining room window (left) has been removed, otherwise it is remarkably unchanged.
In ‘78, there was me, 4, a pre-school student at Montessori and attendee at Mrs. Lanier’s in-home daycare, my sister Lori, 12, a seventh-grader at Lee Junior High, Dad, 39, who worked in auto body repair at Winter Motors in Sacramento, and Mom, 30, an elementary school secretary. We were definitely a comfortable level of middle-class, but with a touch of blue-collar in the mix.
Living nearby were my mom’s older sisters — Aunt Jonna and her husband Uncle Hugh were ensconced over on Rancho Way in one of the more upscale areas of Woodland. This was their home for over a quarter century and the site of many Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. Aunt Thana was single at that time, and if anyone in the family moved house more than us, it was her. Even my remarkable memory cannot keep up with the amount of places she lived during this era. Jonna and Thana had a mix of kids still at home and adult kids already out on their own, but all still in the general Woodland area. Grandma and Grandpa were living a ways up the Capay Valley, in the tiny town of Guinda along Cache Creek…
The earliest memory I have of the days leading up to Christmas ’78 (which may be my first Christmas memory ever) was of making a Christmas card at preschool with
poster paint and Christmas-shaped sponges (trees, bells, angels, etc.). I also remember sitting in the rec room at Mrs. Lanier’s daycare listening to a Christmas-themed record album featuring the Geoffrey Giraffe family from the old Toys R Us ads. (Internet research tells me this was 1975’s A Merry Geoffrey Christmas.) The big Christmas movie release that year was Superman with Christopher Reeve as the Man of Steel. I saw it at the old State Theater — the first movie I saw in a theater — and it made quite an impression. It wasn’t long before I was toting my mayonnaise sandwiches to Mrs. Lanier’s in a red Superman lunchbox.
Instead of getting a pre-cut tree, we did a saw-your-own expedition to a tree farm this year. (Or maybe that was ‘79. I curse my four-year-old self for not keeping detailed notes.) The tree farm would have been up in Placerville, near Apple Hill, and the tree we got was a massive, bushy monstrosity, probably Scotch pine, and over nine feet tall in order to properly fit in our arched front window. Unlike some of our other houses, First Street had high ceilings — and an open floor plan with square footage to spare, so Mom totally rearranged all the furniture every few months or so. From week to week, you never knew if you’d be sitting on the couch to watch TV in the living room, the formal dining room (which we used as more of a den), or the linoleumed area off the kitchen.
We decorated the tree with a standard set of glass balls, bows, candy canes, and tinsel garland (which I enjoyed wrapping around myself and swishing about the house, which may have worried my parents in those pre-enlightened days.) There was also a pink shoebox full of plastic Disney character figurine ornaments flocked in a thin velour which grew balder and mangier over the years, and a potpourri of oddball tree hangings acquired in various ways through various holidays, including a grotesquely overweight topless “angel” with pendulous breasts, handmade out of glazed clay by someone with a skewed sense of humor. The (clothed) angel tree-topper dated from Lori’s first Christmas in 1966. Continue reading
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