Good Luck and a Good Memory

I listened to a voice mail message earlier this week. A man gave his name, then said, “Please call me at your earliest convenience at the main office of the electric coop.” He ended with his phone number.

As a trustee and the secretary/treasurer of a trust my parents established to keep the small family farm intact after their deaths, I pay all the bills. Had I forgotten to pay the rural electrical cooperative that supplied electricity to the farm? That had never happened before, but one time I made a mistake in recording the meter reading. Now the coop reads the meter, so it couldn’t be that.

This certainly wasn’t the time to have the power turned off. We’re in the midst of a severe drought, and just a few weeks ago, the water level had dropped so low that the pump couldn’t reach it. Our tenant farmer had to haul water for the cattle for a couple of days until the well was repaired. It took another forty feet of pipe and several hundred dollars to get the well pumping again.

I’m conscientious about paying bills, so it’s unlikely I missed a payment, but what else could he be calling about? I told myself to quit trying to guess what the man wanted and just return the call and find out.

As soon as I identified myself, he said, “Congratulations! You’re the winner of the $250 electrical credit from the proxy drawing at the annual meeting.” The coop must have a certain percentage of its members vote at the annual meeting so the office mails out proxy ballots for members who can’t attend in person to mail in.

“Wow!” I responded. “I didn’t even pay close enough attention to realize there was going to be a drawing, so this is really a surprise.”

The coop representative said, “We didn’t announce it. The drawing was a surprise to everyone.” He explained that the credit had already been applied to our account, and we won’t need to make another payment until the credit is used up.

This surprise win reminded me of something that happened when I was in elementary school. The hardware store in the little town nearest to our family’s farm held a drawing. To enter, customers had to fill out a form with their contact information and their choice of prize. The store would give either a freezer or an evaporative cooler to the winner of the drawing. No one we knew had air conditioning in our rural area in the 1950s. We thought a window unit that cooled by evaporation of water, commonly called a swamp cooler, was air conditioning. All of us kids were excited about the possibility of winning an air conditioner.

But when Daddy filled out the form, he put the checkmark in the top box, which was a freezer. “Daddy,” we protested. “We already have a deep freeze! We want an air conditioner.”

“It doesn’t make any difference what I put,” he answered. “We’re not going to win anyway.”

He was wrong. He won—a freezer. I’m sure he didn’t even consider asking to change the prize. Daddy never wanted to rock the boat. I suspect he thought a freezer was a better prize anyway. A large family with cattle to butcher and garden crops to harvest could easily use two freezers. A swamp cooler in one window in one room wouldn’t make much difference in the big, old rambling farmhouse.

For a long time, we kids whined, “But we wanted an air conditioner.”

photo credit: p-duke

Christmas Memories

Karen Swim’s post I Gave at the Office started me thinking about past Christmases. Karen wrote about obligatory office gift-giving and offered several excellent alternatives. 

I’ve worked alone for a dozen years or so now so I don’t deal with these issues. But when I owned an interior landscape company, we always had a dinner for our employees and their families. We set up tables in the warehouse, so obviously it was a casual affair. Everyone brought a dish, and  we had a good time relaxing together and getting to know everyone’s spouses and kids.

We also gave the employees a chance to volunteer together to distribute toys to needy children. The Elf Louise Project  was started in 1969 by a college student who collected toys for 13 families. Now the charity delivers toys to more than 20,000 children in about 6,000 families with the help of nearly 5,000 volunteers.

Employees of our interior landscape company who wanted to participate signed up to join a company Elf Louise team. Our company usually fielded several 3-man teams at different times during the holiday season.

One person was assigned to be Santa—the organization provided a Santa suit. One was the driver who had to stay with the car at all times, and the third was the elf responsible for navigating and keeping track of which kid got what toy.

We were given safety warnings, such as never park in a position where we couldn’t make a fast getaway, because many of the homes we delivered toys to were in high-crime neighborhoods. One night the team I was with ended up on a dead-end street. As we were leaving, a carload of rough-looking teenagers pulled in front of us and screeched to a stop. All four doors were thrown open and what looked like a gang of youths jumped out and ran over to our car.

We sat there frantically trying to figure a way out. The boys ran up to the window, yelling, “Santa! Santa! Santa!” We gave them candy from Santa’s bag—Elf Louise provided lots of candy to give away to the kids not on Santa’s list who inevitably showed up when Santa arrived. All our candy that night went to the “gang” of tough-looking guys, who grinned and high-fived each other and said, “Thanks, Santa!” Then they jumped back in their car and drove away.

Experiences like that are worth more than any gifts we could exchange with coworkers.

That memory sparked a memory of another Santa experience.

photo credit: Philms

When I was a member of a local organization for women business owners, we wanted to do something for the Battered Women’s Shelter for Christmas. Our contact told us they had lots of gifts and parties already donated for Shelter residents, but they had just started a program to help women and their children transition to life on their own. Women who had been placed in jobs and moved into apartments needed Christmas presents for their children. We volunteered to host a party and give gifts to those families. That first year there were only 12 families with about 20 children in the program. A church near the Shelter provided space, and the Shelter gave us a list of families, including the names and ages of the children. We solicited donations for the gifts, and half a dozen of us planned the party.

One of our members had played Santa for other organizations and offered to wear her Santa suit to the party. As I was preparing to go to the party, on impulse I picked up my Polaroid camera. I didn’t have any film, so Santa and I stopped at a drugstore on the way to the church. It was quite a sight to see Santa walk through the store—kids materialized from everywhere and followed Santa like kids in the story followed the Pied Piper.

We got to the church, decorated the room, and set up refreshments. As the families arrived, they were quiet and reserved. The kids looked at Santa but shyly clung to their mothers. We had to encourage them to help themselves to cookies and punch, but once the kids had the refreshments in their hands, they grinned between bites and inched a little closer to Santa.

We told the children to sit on Santa’s lap to get their presents and have their picture taken. They hesitated, but the lure of all the gifts stacked beside Santa finally pulled them forward. The children sat on Santa’s lap and received their gifts. I took a picture of each child, then invited the mothers to join all their children for a family photo. They smiled and shook their heads. I couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t want a picture until one mother shyly asked, “How much does it cost?” They thought we were going to make them pay for the pictures, and when we said they were free, they hurried over to stand beside Santa with their children. Several of the mothers had tears in their eyes and said, “This is the first picture I’ve ever had with my children.” 

We gave a gift to each mother and some food items for the families. When no one made any move to open the gifts, I said, “Don’t you want to open your presents?” The mothers gave me a puzzled look and one said, “Oh no, we want the kids to have the gifts on Christmas morning. These are the only presents they’ll get.”

We thought we were making the families’ Christmas a little brighter. In fact, we were giving them the only Christmas they would have. And my impulsive grabbing of my Polaroid camera resulted in one of the best gifts of all.

Through the years, the program grew to the point that the last time we hosted the party (shortly before the women business owners’ organization dissolved), there were about 300 families and 700 or 800 children. We had dozens of volunteers instead of the original half dozen, tons of donated food, and gifts for every child and every mother. I knew to invite the mothers and children to have their pictures taken for free, and we expected that the families would head to the bus stop with bags of unopened gifts so they would have presents to open on Christmas Day.

Participating in these annual parties made me appreciate anew my childhood. When I was growing up, we didn’t have many material goods, but we always had a joyous Christmas. My parents told me that when I was in the first grade or so, I begged for a dollhouse for Christmas. That dollhouse was far beyond Santa’s budget, and my parents felt so bad that they couldn’t give me what I wanted. They saved up and gave me the dolhouse the next Christmas. By that time, I was no longer interested and seldom played with it. I don’t remember any of that—obviously I wasn’t traumatized by being deprived of the dollhouse the year I wanted it so desperately, but it made such a deep impression on my parents that they mentioned it for years afterward.

Daddy always built our Christmas tree. He chopped down several soapbush trees on the farm. He used the largest and most shapely one as the base, then he filled in with branches from the others bushes to make a huge tree. Unlike traditional Christmas trees, it was almost round. Then he loaded it down with lights and decorations and dotted snow (made from whipped Ivory Snow soap) on the branches. I’ve never seen another tree that looked anything like Daddy’s Christmas trees. You can get a glimpse of it in this family photo of my parents and their grown children. Christmas meant lots of family, food, faith, and love.

Christmas is quieter for us now. My parents are gone, and the rest of the family is scattered. Jack and I will go to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve and have  dinner on Christmas Day with my sister and her friend at a local restaurant. The next day, we’ll all get together with my brother and his family from Phoenix, who will spend Christmas Day with my sister-in-law’s family.

There are fewer people than when my parents were alive, but we’ll still have plenty of food, faith, and love. We’ll still remember the reason for Christmas—to celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, who came that we might have eternal life.

Merry Christmas!

Simply the Best

Joanna Young at Confident Writing has given us a real challenge: pick simply the best post for all of 2008.

First I narrowed down my favorite posts to one per month for Middle Zone Musings’ Blogapaloo0za. That was hard enough to do—one month I had to choose one from among three top favorites. Then I went through the favorite posts from each month to choose simply the best for 2008.

Remembering My Parents is simply the best because it still brings tears to my eyes—tears of sorrow that they are no longer with me and tears of  joy for the memories and the love we shared.

Remembering My Parents

Five years ago today, my mother departed this earth to join my father in Heaven, where he had resided for more than eight years. Today, I still thank God regularly for the blessing of being born to these two remarkable people.

By the standards of the world, they never accomplished much. Neither had more than a high school education until Mama trained to become a Licensed Vocational Nurse after the youngest children were in high school and the others had left home. Daddy ran a small farm, but for many years he had to supplement his income by working as a rural letter carrier, a.k.a. mailman. I never realized we were poor until I learned I was eligible for financial assistance for college because we were below the poverty level.

Yet Mama and Daddy were two of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and, more importantly, the kindest, most generous, and most loving. Their world revolved around their six kids. They had high standards for behavior and school performance, and Daddy wouldn’t hesitate to enforce his standards with a spanking. However, I – and I believe all my siblings – were less concerned about being punished for misbehavior than seeing the look of disappointment on my parents’ faces.

Daddy was born on the farm he grew up on, and he lived there his entire life except for three years in the Army and the last few years of his life in a nursing home. Mama was born in California and moved around with her parents who were migrant workers. When she was in high school, she moved to Utah to live with her grandmother after her grandfather died.  She and Daddy met while Daddy was stationed in Utah in the Army.

After the war, Mama left her family and her Mormon religion and moved to Texas to marry Daddy and join his church (Methodist). Just a little over nine months later, I was born, the first of six children. They raised their children, worked their farm, befriended their neighbors, and served their community together for nearly 50 years.

They were simple, unassuming people, but they both had a wonderful sense of humor. You can see their proud smiles in this photo with me as a tiny baby, but the camera didn’t catch Daddy’s mischievous grin that he characteristically wore.

Daddy loved walking through the farm checking on the cattle he knew individually. When I was growing up, south Texas was going through a terrible drought. Daddy found a way to keep going. He couldn’t grow crops or raise cattle, but he discovered that caged chickens didn’t need rain … so he went into the egg business with 20,000 chickens. After the drought ended, he went back to farming crops and cattle.

Patients in the hospital and nursing home loved Mama because she was sweet and thoughtful. She worked for many years as a nurse’s aide before training as a nurse, and in both capacities, she cared for the emotional needs as well as the medical needs of her patients.

Daddy was a whiz at math. He could work any problem in his head, but he couldn’t tell you how he arrived at the answer. As a kid, I used to test him.

“How much is 1,392 times 847?” I’d ask as I punched the numbers into a calculator.

“1,179,024,” Daddy would answer before the calculator processed the problem.

“How did you know that?” I’d ask when the calculator agreed with him.

“That’s just what it is,” Daddy would say.

Mama loved to read and do crossword puzzles and word games. She always had a novel or two along with several puzzle books and pencils handy.

When I was in high school, I was president of the Methodist Youth Fellowship (MYF) Subdistrict (a group of several churches in a small geographic area). Back in those days, churches, like everything else, were segregated. I was invited to speak to the MYF at a black church in San Antonio (nearly a hundred miles from the rural area we lived in). I was thrilled at the invitation but was flabbergasted at the response when I told my parents and asked them to take me. 

Daddy said, “I’m not going to any n- church.”

I think my mouth must have dropped open in shock. I had no idea my father was prejudiced. He did business with and was friendly with many Hispanics at a time and place where there was a lot of prejudice against Mexicans, as Hispanics were called then. There were no black people anywhere around where we lived, so Daddy wasn’t prejudiced against blacks from personal experience. It seemed to be just “the way things were” back then.

My mother, on the hand, was completely different. When she was a child, her father had become very ill and the family couldn’t afford a doctor. A black family in the migrant camp, who must have been just about as poor as my grandparents, helped them out. So my mother had a totally different reaction than my father. She may well have talked to him in private about his reaction, but she would not have done anything he didn’t agree with.

But the thing I so admired about my father was that in spite of his own prejudice, he didn’t pass it on to me. He didn’t forbid me to speak to the black youth group. He even drove me the nearly hundred miles to attend. However, he wouldn’t get out of the car. He and Mama drove around and around until I was finished.

I don’t remember any details of the event except that I was very happy about it. But I will never forget how my father helped me do something he couldn’t bring himself to do because he knew he was wrong (though he would never admit that).

No one on either side of the family had attended college, but all of us kids took it for granted that we would go to college. I’m sure my parents must have worried about how that would happen, but they never discouraged us. All four of the girls eventually earned college degrees, though two dropped out of college and returned much later in life. The two boys had technical training and have gone to professional careers in real estate and technology. This picture is our family the year I left for college.

During my first year of college, my family’s house caught on fire in the middle of the night. Mama woke up smelling smoke and herded everyone outside, though one of my brothers kept trying to get back in bed and go to sleep. Daddy managed to get in and rescue a few business records from the file cabinet in the front room, but then the fire was too hot to save anything else. Everyone sat in the front yard watching the house burn while they waited for the volunteer fire department to arrive from the town seven miles away. Daddy looked around and counted kids.

“There’s only five kids here,” he screamed. “Someone’s missing.” He started to run back into the house, now an inferno in full bloom.

Mama had a hard time making him understand that I was away at college and not in the burning house.

The rest of the family had only the night clothes they were wearing. Everyone in the family wears glasses, and all the glasses burned up in the fire. My parents and siblings spent the rest of the night at my grandmother’s, just a few hundred yards away on the same farm. The next morning, when the school bus stopped at the end of the lane, someone (maybe my grandmother) notified the bus driver that the children wouldn’t be going to school because of the fire. That afternoon, the bus stopped again, this time filled with clothing and household goods that the townspeople had donated. For several months, the family lived in the “egg house,” the building that was used to grade and pack eggs for market. Daddy bought an old frame house, moved it on to the farm, and renovated it for the family’s new home.

My folks didn’t let that fire—or any of the other difficulties they encountered in life—shake their strong faith or change their positive, kind, and loving personalities.

I will always be grateful for being blessed with their love, faith, and nurturing.