My Christmas Story

When I was a child growing up in the 50s my family always got a real tree at Christmas time. Usually about three or four days before Christmas, all of us, dad, mom, my brother, Sam, and my two sisters, Annie and Jean and I would climb into the car and my dad would drive us out to the Dairy Queen in Elm Grove, which at the time was located on Route 40 East where the Rite Aid parking lot is now. The Dairy Queen, of course, was closed for the winter, but we weren’t there for ice cream. We were there to buy a live cut tree to take home and decorate it for Christmas. For a little kid, that was really exciting and the memory of it warms my heart to this day.

There were a couple of times I remember actually going out in the woods to get our tree. My parents, Clifford and Anna Swallow, were born and raised in Washington County in eastern Ohio near the town of New Matamoras. The landscape there is rolling hills and farmland. Sometime in the early 1940s, as a young married couple eager to find a new way of life instead of farming, they traveled north up the river to the “big city” called Wheeling, West Virginia, where there was an abundance of employment opportunities. Most of my mom and dad’s older siblings had already moved to Wheeling. My dad obtained a job at Blaw Knox iron foundry and except for a few years he spent in the U.S. Navy serving our country during World War II, he continued to work there until he retired in the mid-1970s. But no matter how many years they lived in Wheeling, my mom and dad would still refer to the place that they grew up in Washington County, Ohio as “down home.”

My dad’s mother, Clara Swallow, together with my Uncle Gene and Aunt Vera, remained living at the homestead farm where my father grew up. Many of my most cherished childhood memories were of spending time at grandma’s farm on the weekends and entire weeks during the summer months. Grandma didn’t have electric or in-door plumbing. So needless to say, she got her water from a well and, of course, the bathroom facilities were the old proverbial “out house.” But the land was rich in natural gas, so she was able to cook and heat her home with gas and she even had a few gaslights that I always found quite fascinating. That and a few oil lanterns were the only light that we used during the evening hours as we sat in the living room with the adults quietly talking, kids munching on cinnamon toast made with homemade bread and real butter while grandma played some gospel music on the old player piano that was a prominent fixture in that home.

The farm’s 250 acres was spread out over a hillside and the only way to get to it was up a dirt road. As you can imagine, when it would rain or snow, sometimes that dirt road was impassable by vehicle and we would have to park the car at the bottom of the hill and walk up an often time muddy and slippery or snow covered two mile hike to grandma’s house. My mom’s brother, Sam Ring, lived in a hollow at the bottom of that hill and a couple of times we left our car at his house and walked to Grandma’s up through the woods behind his house. We would do this usually around Christmas time so mom and dad could scout for a tree. Dad would chop it down, drag it up to the farm, and later in the weekend load it up in the car to take home. Once we got it home we would always have to listen to the inevitable bickering that occurred while mom and dad tried to get the tree straight in the stand before we could start decorating it. This is a frustration that people who have only used artificial trees will never experience!

When I got older, artificial trees became more and more popular and my mom and dad finally decided that an artificial tree was more economical and convenient than going out to get a real one so we stopped making our yearly “find a tree” outings.

Grandma, Mom and Dad are all gone now and the homestead farm and property have long since been sold. Even now when I let these memories wash over me it reminds me of a much warmer, simpler and easier time. I realize that is probably because I was little and my life was simpler and easier. Some, like my sister, Jean, still do go out and buy a real tree every year. Though I appreciate her “must have a real tree” spirit, it just isn’t enough to make me want to go to the trouble of doing it. I will continue to take the easy way out; drag my pre-lit artificial tree out of storage every year, stick it in a corner and celebrate the birth of Christ and let the memories of yesteryear warm my heart.

 

When I was a child growing up in the 50s my family always got a real tree at Christmas time. Usually about three or four days before Christmas, all of us, dad, mom, my brother, Sam, and my two sisters, Annie and Jean and I would climb into the car and my dad would drive us out to the Dairy Queen in Elm Grove, which at the time was located on Route 40 East where the Rite Aid parking lot is now. The Dairy Queen, of course, was closed for the winter, but we weren’t there for ice cream. We were there to buy a live cut tree to take home and decorate it for Christmas. For a little kid, that was really exciting and the memory of it warms my heart to this day.

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