Most Memorable Christmas

What was your most memorable Christmas?  I spent the first 22 Christmas' in Grapevine, Texas.  My parents moved to Beaumont in 1950, but all of our family still lived in and around Grapevine.  We always spent Christmas Eve at my Paternal Grandparents home and Christmas Day with my Mother's family.  It was usually cold and my brother and I would sleep in the feather bed on the "sleeping porch".

Grandmother, Granddad Wright and Cry Baby

We got to open the presents when we got up Christmas morning. My Grandfather had this old clock that chimed every hour.  We would go to bed early so we could get up early and open the gifts.  Seven o'clock was the magic time.

If I awoke during the night I would listen for the clock.  If it chimed six times, I knew I had only an hour left.  The clock also chimed one time on each half hour.  One time I awoke during the night and was in bed waiting for the chime.  Eventually it chimed.  One "bong", oh no.  I didn't know what time it was. I was afraid to get up and wake my parents until I knew what time it was.  So I just willed myself to stay awake for the next chime.  Surely it would ring seven times.  In thirty more minutes, it chimed again. One "bong".  Since I was pretty good at logic, I deducted that it was either one or one-thirty.  I went back to sleep.

All that said, my most memorable Christmas occurred in 1958.  I was 14, my cousin, Tommy Simmons, was 12 and my brother, Bob, was 11.  I had obtained my driver's license the previous summer.  Daddy Wall let me drive his old Ford coupe.  There wasn't a lot to do in Grapevine, especially on Christmas Eve.  We decided to drive out to the lake.  Being adventurous, we went "trail blazing" leaving the dirt road and driving across the field. As luck would have it, we got stuck.  Several attempts of backing up and going forward only resulted in getting deeper in the muck.  I tried to jack the rear up and put boards under the wheel.  We could only find small boards and that plan was not working.  The sun had gone down and the light was fading.  We were already late for dinner at my Grandmothers, when my little brother who had been standing around watching, said,  "Jimmy, we need to get back"  It was at that moment that I found an appropriate use for many of the words I had heard other kids say in school.

We gave up and I walked to some one's house and called my Dad.  He came and got the car out.
It was not a Merry, Merry Christmas Eve.  I heard all of the chimes on the clock that night.