By Mary Pannabecker Steiner
When Fred sent me this photo, I just groaned. I knew it wasn't a good idea to leave him alone with my dad's slides and photos....sure enough, one has resurfaced. Dad labeled all of his slides and photos but this one had been digitized without a date identification. My best guess was that I was 8 because my brother, John (far right) is 8 years older and looks about 16 in the photo.
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Then there is that hideous '50s wallpaper. The best thing that could be said about it is that it was gone by the next Christmas. Anyway, to get confirmation of the year, I called the only brother living in the same time zone - James...the shorter of the two in the photo.
"I would say 1964. I think I’m the younger Scout. I don’t think it could be Tom because John probably would have left Scouting by the time Tom was a Boy Scout. Also, that’s the way I hold my hand. I would have been 11, and John 16. It couldn’t be 1963 because then I’d be a Cub Scout, and it couldn’t be 1965 because by then I’d be second or first class, rather than Tenderfoot (the badge on my pocket). Also, you look 8 rather than 7 or 9, don’t you think?"
That is a real tree -- purchased at Skip's Nursery, of course. The ornaments and lights were stores in a cupboard above the kitchen sink. Somehow our lights always seemed to work the next year and if one was burned out, we'd just replace it with a new bulb from Crow's Dime Store.
Breakfast on Christmas morning always featured semmel, a chewy German roll best slathered with homemade strawberry jam. And our parents ALWAYS made us eat before we could open presents.
For four years or so, my doll, Ruthie, got a new head every Christmas -- over the years, she had brown, black, and blonde hair, curly and straight. That was another trick I never figured out. Poor Ruthie -- now living in the attic and more than 50 years -- is bald.
Some years, we traveled to Elkhart, Ind., to spend Christmas at out grandparents' home, playing with cousins we saw only every three or four years because their parents were missionaries in Japan. That required the ubiquitous family photo in which we were carefully placed and made to wait while Grandpa set the timer on the triple-lens reflex camera, and then ran to his own place.
Later, when those grandparents decided to winter in Florida, we drove down the not-quite-finished I-75 for Christmas. We got to open presents early that year -- my mom had made me a green and white gingham two piece swim suit to wear on the beach that was populated entirely by Northerners who didn't know any better.
Still later -- Christmas 1972 -- we were living in St. Pete, Fla. What I remember most is opening presents in the very warm, screened porch where we had a decorated pine tree that seemed completely incongruous with the nearby palm trees.
Memories. Everyone has them. What's your favorite?
