An Ogdensburg Christmas Morning

It’s Christmas morning in Ogdensburg, 1973; it’s still the very early morning hours.  The city streets are mostly empty, save for the occasional police car or traveler. All the stores are closed and will stay closed; it seems even they are tired and need a rest from the frantic goings on of the last few weeks. Traffic lights cycle through to no one, and even the mighty St Lawerence is relatively still.

As my 10-year-old brain rises from the murky depths of sleep, the flicker of a flame ignites clearing out the dark,  as I realize today is the day, the day, of all the days of the year. It’s better than my birthday or even the first day of summer vacation.

It’s Christmas morning!

My brain tries to confirm its initial realization, and recalling last night’s Christmas Eve bacchanalia - yes, it’s true, it MUST be Christmas! I snap my head towards my alarm clock, and it’s just after 7. Excellent, not too early where, as my parents might tell me to go back to bed, but early enough not to miss the opening credits of…Christmas! Movement catches my eye out the window, whose shade roller is not quite completely closed, and I see large snowflakes gently falling past, and I think,  what a great start.

Is anyone up? Everyone else liked to sleep in at Christmas. Sleep in? How? Ah, but I could smell bacon cooking, that delicious, salty, fatty treat. I could detect some activity down the hall- hushed, so as not to wake anyone - but activity nonetheless, as I heard some indistinct conversation and a kitchen chair dragged along the linoleum; yes, my folks are up, and Ma was cooking!

“How could I have slept this late?!”

With one dramatic flip, off fly the covers. I’m out of my single bed in one fluid motion and onto my feet, quickly moving to the bedroom door, ripping it open, and about to head to the living room, flying as if a dive bomber at the battle of Midway, but I stop, as something more important comes up - the bathroom. As a kid, that feeling would seemingly come on like a drunk frat boy to a hot girl and was as just as difficult to refute. I was sensitized to the feeling acutely, as Ma would not stop the car for me to go when coming back from some far-flung shopping trip like Empsall’s in Watertown. “Don’t think about it” she’d say. Don’t think about it? What next, walk off a broken leg? So, into the bathroom, I quickly shuffled and “go” as fast as anatomically possible.

I run down the hall,  taking care not to “break your damn neck” as I do, the warning of Ma’s that was constantly hurled at me (it was always the neck she worried about, not a fractured ulna or a bruised liver, always the neck).

As I fly past the kitchen and slide into home plate in the living room, I’m frozen as the sight before me grips my mind, stunned by the beauty and magnificence of it all. The Christmas tree with its bubble lights in full bubble mode, the twinkling of the tinsel on tree - by today’s standard, a biohazard, but back then, a thing of beauty -  and all the peripheral decorations are lit - the plastic Santa on top of the radio/record player console (which had WSLB playing lightly, as their Christmas music would be playing all day), the manger scene atop the TV, and the plugged-in plastic candles in each window. The electric meter outside was probably spinning like a table saw blade, and Dad was liable to have a stroke, but what the heck, it was Christmas! Presents under the tree abound, so much so that they almost seem to be holding the tree upright as they spill out in all directions.

I noticed the quiet - save the radio and mom cooking - of the world outside our large picture window, watching the snow silently fall and very little traffic on the usually busy Route 37; it was as if the whole world was asleep. The motel was closed for a couple of days (I grew up at Ashley’s Motel , now the Stonefence), so mom could catch a break at least, as she was the chambermaid.

I ran to my stocking - the only thing I was allowed to open before everyone would come into the living room and “have Christmas,” and poured it out onto the gold sculpted rug; Hershey’s Kisses, peanut butter cups, one of those red plastic “candy canes” with all the M&Ms inside, the traditional Life Savers “book” and a few Hot Wheels cars. Nice! Santa must have thought I was a good boy that year despite having set the carpet on fire in the living room corner, playing with matches (Ma covered the saucer-sized melted spot up pretty well with the console TV). I glanced over to see that indeed, old Santa had actually been in my living room, as evidenced by the milk and cookies we’d left out being half gone. Even Rudolph had been inside since the carrots were obviously bitten into!

Mom, hearing my commotion, came into the room, complete with the curlers she slept in, bade me a sweet “Merry Christmas!” and, after seeing me about to consume a few chocolates, said, “Don’t be eating those, you’ll make yourself sick! I’ve got a nice breakfast waiting; now, get in here!” Ahh, skunked again. I popped up and went in, and sure enough, mom had been hard at work - oh, it was all there - bacon, whose delicious aroma hung in the air profusely, buttered toast, pancakes, orange juice, plenty of perked coffee, and her specialty, Eggnog-Spiced Cinnamon Rolls. Dad’s favorite, Ted’s Donuts, was always on the table, pretty much year-round. The combined smells were just intoxicating, and at that moment, my stomach started churning over like Dad’s Bel-Air,  and down I plopped in the chair next to everyone else who was well into their breakfast.

On Christmas Eve, which seemed just a moment ago, we had gone to early mass at Notre Dame, which would be extra special this year as I was to take my first communion. I had missed communion with the other kids earlier in the year because I had a bad case of Poison Ivy, but Ma talked to the priest, and he agreed to let me have it on Christmas Eve. Up I went, my mother behind me, and the kid with the little golden plate on a stick held it under my chin as the priest placed it on my tongue. I did the sign of the cross and walked quickly back to the pew, Ma right behind me. When we got back, I leaned back to let the wafer melt on my tongue - as instructed - and it slid back, gagging me, and I threw up a little right there! Ma of course, heard this, and I looked at her with fearful eyes and she said, “My God, did you just throw up Jesus?!” She was fit to be tied but had a handkerchief with her in her purse and mopped up the little bit of stuff I did bring up, including the wafer, and tucked it into her purse. Ma was an RN by trade, and a little vomit was no big deal to her. It was never to be talked about again, so grave was this transgression; in her mind, I suppose she imagined a forthcoming papal decree of excommunication would be coming soon. Dad just shook his head, and my brother Mike laughed at me, which got him a hard elbow from Dad.

Mass was over shortly after that, which, in my kid brain, was the moment the final countdown began to Christmas - like the ten-second mark when they were ready to launch a rocket - and then off we would go to start our rounds of visiting my aunts and uncles homes on upper New York Ave, Lake and Bigelow Streets  - never really having a meal, so much as a buffet of appetizers, like the never to be missed Swedish Meatballs, Hickory Farms port wine cheese balls encrusted in nuts or Pigs in a Blanket. The adults enjoyed their beverages like Old Fashioneds, Tom Collins, and all those other odd-sounding drinks that tasted like gasoline (being a boy, I had snuck a taste of mom’s drink once and, coincidentally, had accidentally tasted gas when an errant drop flew into my mouth as I filled the mower gas tank, and concluded they were pretty much the same liquid). My cousins and I drank soft drinks in abundance until we were all so tweaked on caffeine and sugar that little sparks of electricity felt like they might shoot out from our trembling fingers, so inflamed was our nervous system. We would be sweating, and our blood, if tested at that moment, might suggest we were end-stage renal failure. We had a great time playing games like Trouble or Sorry! (But not Monopoly, as that game lasted so long, it seemed meant for ocean voyages) as the adults seemed to get louder and sillier, drinking and smoking, laughing it up, usually in or near the kitchen, the constant tinkle of ice cubes tumbling into a glass, and we kids just kept waiting for the time to fly by when we would hear that magical expression, “Well, we should get going, we gotta get these kids to bed…” followed by my aunt’s often heard foil of “What’s your hurry?” which would reset the clock. We kids died a little bit inside when that was heard on Christmas Eve.

Eventually, of course, we did bid our final “Merry Christmas” and piled into the car, and drove up 37. We were all told to get ready for bed, though we were still quite worked up on the large amounts of sugar and caffeine we had ingested (known by it’s more common name, “Pepsi”), and had a hard time calming down to sleep, which eventually did come late in the evening.

After breakfast, it was time—THE time, THE moment—that revolved around the whole kid’s year—to open presents!

“I just have to get the dishes done and put away these leftovers” would be my mother’s ever-present and invincible block. You see, that HAD to get done, lest another mother come over, see the mess in the kitchen, and determine my mother was a complete failure as a homemaker, which, over the course of a decade, might be forgotten and scrubbed from the memories of other mothers in Ogdensburg that heard that heinous gossip. But the food - oh no, if that had stayed out on the table for another hour, it might give us all botulism, should it be ingested after that.

I resigned myself to this situation, hoping against hope that she would—just once—let all that go and come in and open presents, but alas, it was not to be.

But then, it WAS time.

Dad would have started a nice fire and sat back in his chair, nursing a cup of coffee and fiddling through the Journal’s sports pages from the previous day; he’d be wearing his blue pajamas, bathrobe, and slippers, and I’d be in my Spiderman pajamas. Then, Mom would come in finally, taking off her apron and tossing it onto a chair, which was somewhat like the green flag for the race to begin!

My older brother and sister weren’t quite as hepped-up as I was, and mom would always ask who was going to play Santa - who would distribute the presents - and I was smart enough to know I didn’t want to be that person, as I wanted to OPEN them, not act as the home UPS guy. My sister was usually the one, and being so sweet would hand ones to Mom and Dad first. By this time, my brother Mike would have counted who had the most presents and would tease me by saying he had more than me - be it true or not - and I would either cry or fling a Hot Wheels at him. In a previous life, I was convinced that Mike was the Marquis de Sade, as he was always teasing my sister and me. He would try to drown me in the river by playing “Sally in the Seawater”, as he would bear hug me from behind, holding me underwater so long on the last verse, I nearly passed out. If my sister was on the phone talking to a boy, he’d come in and try to rip her slippers off, or create other similar mayhem.

Another card that mom would play is the one-at-a-time card - one person had to open their present and show it to everyone before moving on to the next person. No piranhas-on-an-unsuspecting-animal behavior in this house! But one by one, we’d open our gifts, the tearing of wrapping paper cutting through the air, and I would get things I circled in the Sears catalog and also things I didn’t expect - but was pleasantly surprised by, like my Hawaiian Punch wristwatch. Of course, you’d get the bag of socks or pajama set, which was a waste of present to a kid like me, but it was part of the game. Mom would constantly - and frequently - admonish us to “save the bows!” for next year. I don’t know how expensive or rare these bows were, but I swear we’d have some dating back to the Ming dynasty, and they seemed as valuable as Faberge eggs.

After all the gifts had been opened, Dad would have me throw all the wrapping paper into the fireplace (being a little pyro, I was anxious to volunteer), and the fire would roar for a few moments, and the living room would, in moments, turn into a Swedish sauna. Coincidentally, the next day, we could never find the directions to the games Santa had brought. In later years, I figured Patrick the Pyro had, in his zeal, accidentally burned them up with the wrapping paper. Meanwhile, the thermostat, being in the living room, wouldn’t kick on for the next couple of hours, plunging the back part of the house into rooms cold enough to hang sides of beef.

In the early afternoon, as the bloom of Christmas morn had started to wane, my cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents would come over, my cousins bringing their favorite toys, and the adults their favorite tall bottle of booze, holding it up in the air as they came in, like a coveted prize from an awards show, and off the day would go, more eating, more drinking, more playing, and more being with the ones that matter.

Those Christmases long ago were some of the best times of my life. There was the magic of Santa, the tsunami of new toys, the time off from school…but mostly, all the wonderful people of my family were still alive and well, gathered in one spot, having fun, and enjoying each other.

And isn’t that what Christmas was really all about?