An Ogdensburg Christmas

It was one of those Ogdensburg nights in December 1972—cold enough to turn your breath into an ice sculpture but not quite cold enough to stop your mother from dragging you downtown for some “quick” Christmas shopping. It was a Friday night, and many people were out and about.

The year was 1972, but in Ogdensburg, time often felt like it stopped around 1963, as change came to this town about as often as a teenager volunteers to do the dishes.

Ford Street and State Streets - where most went to shop - were alive with the chaotic energy only the holiday season can bring - save the Seaway Festival parade. Cars crawled by, their exhaust puffing away like a toxic dragon’s breath, while pedestrians in varying states of holiday-induced frenzy marched up and down the sidewalks, some dumping their treasures into the trunks of their cars, only to continue on.  Shoppers darted into places like The Surprise, Newberry’s, Woolworth’s, and Frank’s—each store promising magic and bargains but usually delivering one or the other.

The streets were a treacherous mix of slushy snow and grime, forming a substance that could only be described as caramel Sno-Cone slop. It was neither liquid nor solid, and it had the uncanny ability to seep into boots regardless of how many layers of socks you wore and how carefully you walked.  If you managed to stay upright, that was a Christmas miracle in itself. Behind car wheels, barnacles of this now frozen gunk adhered to these land yachts, building up in size until they practically dragged on the ground.

Above it all, the city’s plastic decorations turned downtown into a glowing yuletide cacophony of visual excitement. Snow was gently coming down, and the whole scene was like a snow globe shaken by an overexcited toddler. Strings of lights crisscrossed the streets; lit plastic candy canes and red bells clung to lamp posts, and an airborne Santa and his team of reindeer hovered mid-flight. The message was clear: Christmas wasn’t just coming; it was already here, lighting up every corner of the town.

Among the bustling shoppers, kids like me were towed around like reluctant luggage with two broken wheels, barely keeping pace with their determined mothers, hellbent on a mission that would put a kamikaze to shame.  My mom had me bundled up in so many layers that I could’ve been mistaken for a misplaced roll of insulation. On my feet were the black fireman galoshes that every kid seemed to own—oversized, of course, because “you’re a growing boy,” and you needed to get another year or two out of them. These weren’t boots so much as flotation devices for feet. Each step sounded like I was stomping through an orchestra of wet whoopee cushions, splishing and splashing wherever I trod.

Grandma Ashley had knit my mittens, using a perfectly traced outline of my hand as a pattern. She’d added a string that connected them, threading the whole thing through my jacket sleeves so I couldn’t lose them—though I still managed to misplace at least one every other week. And then there was my hat: a hand-knit “tewk,” as Ma called it. Decades later, I’d learn this was just her demented French Canadian version of “toque”: that tall white poofy hat chefs wear. The Ashley vocabulary often spat out little remnants of what once was the French language; “mulldew” as Ma used to say, was the white trash version of the elegant and reverent “mon dieu.”

This ensemble I was saddled with was designed with one goal in mind: to ensure that no child in my mother’s care ever experienced the sensation of being too cold. I was sweating buckets under all those layers, but the moment I unzipped my jacket by half an inch, Mom shot me a glare that said, “Do you want frostbite? Is that what you want?” and would zip up the jacket even higher than it once was. Demons in hell would have been cooler than I was.

In stark contrast to my style, which resembled rolled-up socks, Ma was elegantly dressed like her motherly friends. She wore a long, light brown suede coat with a faux fur collar, chic boots, gloves, a coordinating purse, and, of course, lipstick along with perfectly styled hair. Back then, women wouldn’t step out in public unless they appeared ready to meet the man of their dreams or possibly come across an errant Vogue photographer.

But tonight was special because we were headed to Newberry’s, which was like the Sears catalog comes to life. Ahh, the Sears Christmas catalog - no other book in kidom was more reread, more desired, more revered than that periodical. I had so many toys circled in that catalog it measurably added weight to it. Newberry’s had everything a kid could dream of, plus one thing no kid in a small town like mine could not be fascinated by: an escalator. I could’ve watched those disappearing and reappearing stairs for hours, but my mother was having none of it. She clamped onto my wrist with a vice grip, convinced I’d be kidnapped the moment she let go. According to her and the Ogdensburg Journal,  kidnappings were an epidemic sweeping the nation—second only to polio in the pantheon of parental fears.

Inside the store, the air was thick with the smell of wet wool,  peppermint candy canes, and cigarette smoke (back then, I think even infants smoked). Christmas music played lightly in the air - likely just a microphone constantly keyed and held up to a radio speaker tuned to WSLB. My mittens, now damp from sweat and slush, made my hot hand feel like a steamed lobster claw as I tried to keep up with Ma. Every aisle was a blur of tinsel, toys, and tightly-packed shoppers. Shopping wasn’t just looking for things, no, it was just as much trying to avoid bumping into other people. I was somewhere between enchanted and exhausted, trudging along like a mismatched caboose clinging to the rear of the locomotive that was my mother.

As Mom yanked me out the door finally,  I craned my neck for one last look at the escalator; Its hypnotic rhythm called to me like sirens to a sailor; and now, I was destined to be towed by my mother to another store, and its maze of aisles, as she clutched my slushy mitten and I caught myself sucking on my now-drenched knit scarf.

After what seemed like dozens of more stores, I was starting to get  whiney, and Ma pointed out I was getting tired; “I’m not tired!” I would shoot back; of course, I was, but you never admitted that as a kid because you’d be sent to bed. We finally hopped into the old Chevy and made our way up Route 37, trying to get warmed up in a car whose heater seemed to put out all the warmth of five candles. It was snowing a bit harder, and Ma would alternate between the high and low beams as cars approached. When the high beams were on, I was instantly transformed into going warp speed through a star field like I would see on Star Trek, such was the visual it created.

When I finally arrived home (it would take an incredibly long ten minutes), I was just barely hanging on to consciousness, my body drained of all its water thanks to the bundling up my mother had done and all the rushing around of that “quick” shopping trip.

Quickly, I would shed that chrysalis of clothing and emerge a boy again, flinging the sopping mittens and scarf onto the heat register, which would make them as dry as dust in about five minutes, and then off to a quick bath, and into bed, and as tired as I was, dreamt of what Santa would be dropping off at my house on the approaching Christmas morn.