Christmas is a special time, not only for western businesses, but for those of us who came of age during the 1950's and 1960's. We were the first kids to have television as a diversion. We suffered through the nuclear annihilation drills at school where we dutifully ducked and covered our little noggins underneath our school desks, believing this to be the safest location in the event of a nuclear attack. I ask God for forgiveness for looking at all those white panties exposed by my shemale classmates at a time when I should have been praying for my soul's salvation. I enjoyed the bomb drills way to much in a sick way.
At this time in my life I believed if I hid under the covers of my bed at night monsters would be unable to find me, keeping me safe. I only had to have my nose sticking out for fresh air, the only body part exempted from the monster rule. It obviously worked. I am here, 50 plus years later, without even so much as a scratch from a monster. Many of whom I suspect passed my bed by in their nightly rounds looking for the careless children with more tender parts exposed.
My motto at the time was you could never be too safe when dealing with nuclear explosions or monsters. I would be nearly 40 yrs old before I would realize the greatest monster ever conceived of was lurking just beneath those fresh white cotton panties I was so fond of peeking at during the nuclear bomb drills in grade school. Nobody warned me.
Though my parents struggled financially as most young parents did in these times of my childhood, my grandparents were well off. Grandfather Finkbinder was a country doctor and his wife, Granny, was his companion and boss. They were products of the depression and stayed out of debt and doted on their only child's children and therefore Christmas was fantastic.
I have already relayed in these tomes how my older brother was the favored, but at Christmas, judging by the gifts, they even felt a little something for me, in the spirit of Jesus's birthday and all, but only just for that one day.
Sometimes I would suspect foul play when my brother and I would get identical gifts. In these cases, my gift would always be broken or not function as advertised. In 1961 we got a couple of compressed air powered rocket ship kits and my rocket had a crack in the fuselage and I could not power it even off the launch pad no matter how many times I pumped that piece of shit up. My brother wowed the neighborhood with his powerful emissions into the lower stratosphere and was looked on as one might view a young Wernher Von Braun complete with all the fanfare and benefits.
My luck was so bad, if I pulled a tee-shirt out of my drawer and just put it on without checking the label, I had it on backwards 105% of the time. I say 105% since even if I checked the label and made the necessary rotation, it would still be wrong a good number of times. To this day, I still cannot pick up a tee-shirt and put it on without looking for the label. A rudimentary knowledge of statistics would predict I would have a 50/50 chance of getting it right. No, the Jack Maybolt tee-shirt rule was more powerful than statistics!
Two identical Daisy 22 caliber pump pellet guns under the tree in 1963. Mine had to be sent back to the folks at Daisy for an adjustment or a replacement as the barrel was bent. My brother's pellet gun would nail flies on the fence near the chicken coop at 100 ft, open sights, right out of the box. Even after my gun came back from the factory that next March, which they wrapped and gave to me for my birthday, I had to aim low and right to even hit a garbage can lid from 20 feet. Now I was not ungrateful, but I would have been more grateful if some of my gifts at least worked well enough so that I might break them myself, but they always seemed to come to me pre-broken.
Granny was a large dumpling of a woman who. through the years. had packed on a few extra pounds which would have come in handy if food had stopped being available for about a fortnight, but since this shortage never materialized in her lifetime, she was packing for no good reason. She traded for a new Cadillac Sedan De Ville every year and this was her only indulgence save her grandchildren, especially the older one.
Our summers were routinely hot as hell. We played outside continuously and were acclimated to the heat and humidity. I was a thin child, who subsisted on Mayonnaise sandwiches with the crust cut off and dipped in CoCola, the real deal when it was made with cane sugar. My father would try to give me something new to eat from time to vary my diet, which were all rejected by me. His father, also a product of the depression, took over my feeding and care for a fortnight during my summertime visit to the other grandparents, who lived in Nashville.
Nashville was only a pleasant little 6 hr drive pre interstate along a dangerous two lane highway, famously known as route 66. Every 12 miles or so you had to slow down and pass through a small country town. Our Volkswagen Beetle was crowded with parents in front, and three children ages, 6, 5 and 4 piled in the backseat. I was the 5 yr old and both the 6 yr old and I would get severe spankings if the 4 yr old ever screamed.
"Quit touching me!"
And here is where I had all the advantages, my father liked me best and my ass whoopings were 50% of what Wernher Von Braun could expect. Of course, he was twice my size from first I could recall, but now we have become even in old age.
When we get to Nashville, I am left with my grandfather, Himmler. I can still recall the dread I felt wash over me as I watched my parents and siblings drive away that day. He is a strict disciplinarian who is not accustom to baby boomers and their finicky ways. He attended college during the depression and though he wanted to be a physician, he took a pharmacy degree to get out two years earlier to start to earn money to help with his younger brothers and sister. He assures my parents before they leave he will teach me to eat. I had my doubts.
First dinner was mashed potatoes, gravy, turkey, dressing and green beans. I was able to take a few bites of the yellow and white items on the plate, but I could not touch the green beans. Herr Himmler sternly informed me I was not going to leave that table until I cleaned my plate. I recall crying as I stuffed the remaining yellow and white foods down into my already full belly.
I cried and I recall with bemusement at how the beans seemed to dance on my plate depending on how large a tear was in my eyes. His order for me to take a bite of the green beans and chew it up was followed by me. The taste and texture of the beans to me could not have been more disturbing if those beans had been sprayed with sick cat shit and left in the sun to dry for a week. As soon as the flavor hit the back of my tongue, I vomited my entire meal. It seems even Himmler had a breaking point.
He died 9 yrs later when the aorta in his abdomen burst while he was working in his pharmacy. He was 67 years old. I did not cry at his funeral. He had little use for children, and children had even less use for him. I was so lucky that my father was the antithesis of his father. A little bit of human kindness and love and empathy on Himmler's part would have brought out the tears at his service. Oh well, he was probably only thinking of us in the long run, funerals with tears are so messy and border on the down right depressing!
Mark Twain quipped, and he quipped a lot in his short 85 years, "The reason people rejoice at the news of a birth, and cry at funerals is they are not the focus of the celebration in either case." Or something like that?
Jackson Delano Maybolt, President, Urban Poverty Law Center
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