A memorable Christmas ... 40 years ago

Tis the time of year for reflecting on Christmases past. Many of us can recall a favorite toy we got or the year the tree fell down or some such thing.

This week, I found myself thinking of Christmas in 1968. The irony is I can't tell you if I got a book, a baseball or even handkerchiefs. The gift I do remember was, as the saying goes in the commercials, priceless.

In early December of that year, Mom suffered some kind of seizure at work. I was just 15 and away at school at the time and was given only the necessary information. All I knew was Mom was very ill and she might not even get home for Christmas.

It was up to my brothers and myself to put the house in Holiday order. We went out and got a tree and decorated it. I don't remember much of the details but it was quite a feat for the four boys, age 15-21, to agree on ornament placement and to work together to turn the tree into a masterpiece.

As soon as we got the word that Mom's doctor was going to allow her to come home for Christmas, we promptly cleaned the house from the attic to the basement. It could have passed a white glove test and even the nuns at St. Francis could have bounced quarters on our beds successfully.

Not everything went perfectly. The first night the tree was up, the cat climbed up and sent it crashing to the floor. (We ended up tying it to a window sill.) Mom had originally bought the cat as a gift for me but she had a special fondness for him. The day she was supposed to come home, he was a muddy mess. I took him to the sink and gave him a bath. Even put a towel in the dryer for him to be warm. The cat took the bath without comment and seemed to love the warm towel. But when I turned my head for a second, he bit my earlobe so hard I bled like crazy. Nobody had ever told me how much some cats disliked water.

My brothers brought Mom home from the hospital with the warning she would be weak and we needed to be careful. When she got into the house, one of the first things she saw a cage with a huge bird in it. "Do you like it? We didn't have time to wrap your gift," said my brother Paul, who was known as the serious one in the family.

"Oh, no," she said, sitting weakly on the couch. "You didn't, did you?"

I'll never forget Mom's smile when she was told we were simply housesitting the bird for a friend of ours who had gone to Florida for the holidays. She knew she had been royally had ... and I suspect she liked the idea a lot.

Nothing was said but I think we all understood this could very well be our last Christmas with Mom. (It turned out to be the case. She passed away the following May.)

Mom had always made Christmas great for us and now we tried to do the same for her. As I recall, my older brothers Frank and John did most of the cooking. (My culinary contribution was mastering a new contraption in the house called a toaster oven.)

Paul, who was very good at these things, did a lot of the cleaning around the house. (There was one odd diversion: the bird, who was fairly quiet, would screech loudly when the vacuum was used. Although our house had a lot of animals in it from time to time, birds were never part of the equation. Now I know why.) I walked the dog without protest, cleaned up the cat's litter daily and attempted to be less than a pain-in-the-butt to my brothers than usual.

The literal memory stops there. I can't tell you a single physical gift I received. But what I can still recall is a general feeling of happiness around the house that year. Even Dad, who was having so many problems with depression he needed to be hospitalized to handle them, came home for Christmas Day dinner and was playful and cheerful.

This was Christmas 40 years ago and I can remember it like it was yesterday.

So this is my holiday wish this year: no matter what your form of celebration is this week (or next), may it be one where peace, harmony and a feeling of good feelings reign in your household. In these tough economic times, we may not be able to give as many physical gifts as usual. Sometimes, however, the best ones you give can't be measured with a pricetag. Best of all, nobody ever wants to return them.

Snow ... in the desert?

Okay, so we go to Laughlin, NV for a few days of vacation. The vacation is fine and we are headed back, a little poorer but somewhat refreshed to Las Vegas to fly home. It's raining when we leave but that's no big deal. Now we get to Searchlight, the small town that is the home of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, that is about halfway back.

And what do we see? A blinding snowstorm. In the desert, no less.

I kid ye not. Here is the proof:




It did not make me yearn for home.

Winter rules

Winter has finally arrived in St. Paul. It snowed an inch or two on Saturday and we had a flurry or two of activity yesterday as well.

Funny thing about this town. It changes in winter. In the summer, things are languid and slow moving. But when the first serious snow hits the ground, the old place seems to perk up. Despite the crappy economic news out of Detroit these days, people just seemed more upbeat and mobile the past few days. Even my invisible neighbor (a woman who has lived next door to me us for five years or so but never speaks to anybody) was cheerfully out shoveling yesterday.

Pete, the happy dog, was also on top of his game yesterday, making doggy angels in the middle of the street as we strolled through the hood. Later, he bounded to and fro in the backyard, barking cheerfully at squirrels instead of with his usual venom aimed at intruders to his private preserve.

I am never quite sure what to make of this euphoria. I suspect it is the general feeling we're all in this winter thing together here. So you might as well relax and make the best of it.

Whatever the reason, as crazy as this sounds, I think many Minnesotans like the start of winter better than the start of summer. Come mid-January, we'll probably be singing a different tune. For now, however, people seem upbeat. Wonder if that is true in Alaska as well?

When is enough ... enough?

Stanley Woodward was a well-known sports editor in New York in the 1950s and 1960s who once grumbled his writers were spending too much time "godding up the athletes" and not enough time doing actual reporting.

I found myself wondering what Woodward, Red Smith and the rest of the old gang would be saying today. The news out of New York is a fellow named Plaxico Burress, a very good wide receiver for the New York football Giants, is in a load of trouble. Seems the fellow, who was supposed to be nursing an injury, went to one of the city's nightclubs and somehow ended up shooting himself in the leg with a gun he had in his pocket. That would be bad enough but, since this fellow is a well-known athlete, a lot of people started running interference to keep the information from the police and everybody else.

The police, naturally, took a dim view of this. New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg sensed a media opening and poured through with a series of loud complaints that is making the local media giddy.

Bloomberg may be grandstanding a bit when he complains about the Giants and the NFL working overtime to keep the issue quiet (what did he think they would do?) but his main point is a solid one: now that we know what the guy did, he shouldn't avoid paying the same penalty you and I would for such an infraction.

But that is not how we do things in this country. The Big Three automakers run their businesses into the ground and Congress gives them all the money they want to stay afloat. A celebrity gets into legal trouble and ends up on probation for something that would send you and I to the clink.

We spend so much time godding up athletes, movie stars and CEOs that we have forgotten a basic fact: take away their money, fame and good looks and they are no different than us. In fact, when the time comes to head to the next life, there is not a damn thing a Donald Trump can do about it. Eventually, he will end up looking like me.

Eventually, enough will be enough. Mr. Burress may be doing society a favor that is long overdue. He may provide the impetus needed for us to respect celebs and CEOs for their accomplishments while still treating them like anybody else. If so, his shot in the leg is a welcome shot in the arm at a time when this country needed one.

Plenty to be thankful for this year

A couple of years ago, my employer at the time told me he had no further use for my service, saying I was a "glass half-empty" sort of guy. (By that, I think he meant I simply refused to agree with him when he had some half-cocked plan that would make the company instant money but might not be good for the customer in the long run. If that is "glass half-empty", I plead guilty.)

I like to think of myself as just the opposite, a "glass half-full" person. Granted, I have been semi-employed for the past six weeks and my favorite pro football team has a chance to be the first squad ever to go 0-16 in a season. It's minor inconveniences in the big picture.

Life really is not so bad. I have a terrific wife who went through a surgical procedure and (it appears) came out fine. I have a terrific family, the type of people you are honored to be associated. We have a dog we like a lot and who (I think) likes us.

We have been doing a lot of work on our house this year. It has been a long process but the basement is taking shape and looking nice. We live in a nice neighborhood, an areas where folks notice when something is out of the norm and check in to make sure everything is okay.

Although there are times when it is appropriate to do so, it is just too damn easy to be cynical and downcast about life. There was a story this week about a blind woman who runs a convenience store in downtown St. Paul. Some grinch had stolen her laptop. Mark Dayton, a former US Senator here, heard about it and said he would buy her a new one (it cost $6,500).

Dayton certainly has the dough to do so but that's not the point. The point is he saw someone who was in need and helped the person, who was very thankful he did. (Judging by the comments on one of the local papers' website, it wasn't enough. Some people are never satisfied.)

As long as we have that type of spirit still around in this country, there is plenty to be thankful for this year. Along that line, here is my Thanksgiving wish: For one day (okay, two), can we stop focusing on those big car company CEOs who are making oodles of money and thumbing their noses at the American public? Can we quit carping about politicians from the other party? Instead, can we just take a second to look around and see what is right in our little world? Is that really a hard thing to do?

Happy birthday, Colleen!

My mother-in-law turned 80 years old today. Although she isn't the reason why many people have the day off, it is appropriate nonetheless.

You see, Colleen is the type of person we need to honor in this country. She is an original self-made woman.

Not self-made in the usual sense. Colleen was never a big-time salesperson who started her own company and made a gazillion dollars. Instead, she did something I would argue is more important. She worked at being a good mom and wife and worked hard at being there for her kids when they needed her ... even though they sometimes didn't know it.

She is a woman of terrific accomplishment, like being the valedictorian of her high school class when it was unusual for a woman to do so.

When her husband died several years ago, she quietly went out and acquired a driver's license. She didn't use it a lot. But it was there when she needed it. When she finally sold her car earlier this year, the dealer marveled at how clean it was ... and how good the parts were in it.

We have probably played 40 games of Scrabble together. The Detroit Lions and I have something in common here -- neither of us can claim a victory in our field of combat. The closest I got was a tie broken when she had the last word ... literally.

She has looked illness and heartbreak in the mouth and knocked it sideways. She did this with a matter-of-fact attitude so common in this area ... and to people of the greatest generation.

More importantly, she always did it smartly but with a light touch when needed.

When they say they don't make 'em like they used to, they are right. But there's a good reason for that. Class isn't easy to duplicate

This is a good thing

I just got back from my voting place. I figured 10:00 a.m. was a quiet, lowkey time to go do my civic duty. It was quiet but not lowkey. There was a line to get to the one of the 11 booths in our tiny precinct. They even offered up some space where a person could sit and fill out a clipboard.

No matter which side of the spectrum you fall on, this is comforting to see. Minnesotans love elections (we traditionally are among the leaders in the country in participation) and this year appears to be no different.

Despite the talkies' constant yammering and the negative ads that make us all crazy, we're still out there voting. As Martha Stewart would say, that is a good thing.