After eating a tasty (that’s actually questionable) Christmas Slaw Dog for breakfast, I ate a second one for lunch. I spent most of the day at my PC. I connected with cousin Betty in St. Pete and video-chatted with CyberDave in Roanoke and with Linda in Roanoke and with Ralph in Costa Rica. I slowed long enough to nuke a frozen entrée mid-afternoon. And of course I wrote and published a blog post (the previous post) plus this second post. In between events, I watched some YouTube.
The day’s temperature got up to 55°F (from 25° at 8AM). There was a weak winter sun that brought little cheer. I do not have the words to express the ordinariness of this holiday. I know it wasn’t always thus. There was a time long ago when it was special. I have special memories of those Christmases.
For example, one Christmas when I was a teenager, my dad sent me out to get a Christmas tree. It was nighttime and he was drunk, so he didn’t want to go out himself. He gave me the keys to his big Buick Electra and I drove to a nearby Christmas tree stand. The man operating it was an off-duty cop. I selected a tree and popped open the Buick’s trunk (boot, if you’re a Brit). I had momentarily forgotten that dad was an alcoholic, and the trunk (or boot) held dozens of brown paper bags. Inside each bag was an empty Four Roses Whiskey bottle. I knew that, but I didn’t know what the cop thought. He said nothing, but loaded the tree into the Buick and I took it home. I told you I had special memories of Christmas.
Memories beget other memories, and the memory of the Four Roses bottles brings forth another memory. Dad was driving us on a country road, and he raised the whiskey bottle to his mouth and finished off its contents. He rolled down his window, cocked his drinking arm, and hurled the bottle toward the other side of the road. Unfortunately, the bottle didn’t clear the window, instead slamming into the vertical metal bar between the car window and the vent window, which acted like a powerful spring that propelled the bottle around the inside of the Buick like a rocket, ricocheting off various windows and panels until its momentum was gone. That was exciting.
And now it’s time to call it a day. I’ve got a routine doctor appointment in the morning, and no doubt she will quiz me about how I got a black eye. Should I tell the truth or make up a story? Would she believe a Christmas party champagne cork? Probably not.
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