Merry Christmas 2010

Merry Christmas everybody. It is finally here. The kids can finally stop pointing at the television commercials for toys and cease pinning notes to the pillow with a revised list for Santa. Tis the season for heading out again tonight to see the lights down Stone Mountain Street to the Blackmon's home in Buncombe. I have long admired Mr. Blackmon not just for his public service to our county but he was stationed in the U. S. Army in Germany with a guy from Memphis named Elvis Presley. My girls love coming to Tallapoosa for the simple reason of the people out here are friendlier than the suburban "in a hurrys" in Cobb County. I live in a neighborhood in East Cobb and don't know but about half the people on our street. In Tallapoosa we pretty much know everyone. I posted something on Facebook a few days back about how I remember my grandmother at Christmas time would have a big wooden bowl filled with Washington apples, oranges, and tangerines. The house smelled of the cedar tree cut down behind Edgar and Cleo Arnold's house. Mamanier was always baking tea cakes during the holidays. She made pies of pumpkin and mince. I haven't had a good piece of mince pie since sitting at her kitchen table in 1982. The tree was decorated with multi-colored lights and had garland made of the finest plastic. Mother loved those shiny icicles that hung on the branches of the Christmas tree. Do they still make them? The house seemed to be filled with music by Perry Como, Andy Williams, Gene Autry, Johnny Mercer, Bing Crosby, Ertha Kitt, and Dean Martin crooning "Baby Its Cold Outside." I am old fashioned in the kind of Christmas music heard around the house. You will not find the version of "Blue Christmas" allegedly sung by a Warner Brother porcine character in my holiday collection of tunes. "Please Come Home For Christmas" by Fifty Cent and Lady Gaga's "Santa Baby" won't be found either. Can it be Christmas without hearing "White Christmas" the 100 million selling recording by Bing Crosby? NBC once again broadcast the Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed classic "Its A Wonderful Life." "Christmas Story",Jean Shepard's hilarious account of Christmas in northern Indiana in the 1940's is on for 24 hours straight on TBS. The most famous line is one I heard about 50 Christmas mornings ago when I got my first Daisy B. B. gun. "Don't shoot your eye out" I can still hear my mother preach from the back door as I went into the woods near Slaughter Pen Creek searching for imaginary bad guys. Mother reminded me that Tallapoosa was a bird sanctuary prohibiting me from pointing it at any living creature. Could Tallapoosa being a bird sactuary be the reason the buzzards hang around here during the fall? Just a thought. Christmas morning was usually waking up around 5 a.m. and running to the tree in the living room and seeing the bounty from the North Pole. Christmas dinner was always a baked turkey or chicken. Sage corn bread dressing, and the best biscuits ever to come out of an oven. The holiday feast was topped off by a slice of mince or pecan pie. I still refer to lunch as dinner and dinner as supper. How many of you do that too?

Christmas morning when I was about 13 I got a Western Flyer bicycle from Ray Hitchcock's Western Auto. It has chrome fenders and had Tallapoosa High School colors of red and white. I rode that bike for the next 5 years and I proved you could haul a snare drum hung around your neck many times on that bike. I wanted a motorcycle like Fred Owen and Mike McBurnett when I got to my senior year. I envied their rides when they'd roll down the street on their motorcycles. My wish was vetoed by the home administration of Mary Frances and Mamanier. I finally got one when I was in my 40's.
Do any of you remember opening presents and your mother made you save the bows and ribbons? She recycled ribbons and bows every Chrismas and never used a new one ever. She'd even save the boxes from Rich's and Davidson's. My mother was going green before it was fashionable. Christmas time is a time for reflection and to count blessings. I am grateful for Presley and Callie who've given my life so much happiness. I thank the good Lord for a job that is loved. I have two places to sleep that keep the rain off. I have the blessing of friendship. My most treasured friends are the ones I met here long ago. I am thankful for having a Savior who loves us and who hung on a cross for our sins. His birthday sometimes gets caught up with "things." I sometimes read the story of Christ's birth in the Book of Mark in the New Testament and think of how an humble beginning Jesus had but went on to teach us all about loving one another and how we should be kind to each other. Your life can't be measured by your possessions or your bank statements. I've learned that money truly won't buy happiness. In the tough times in my life, the words of my grandmother of "turning it over to the Lord" ring in my heart. We all have seen some potholes on life's highway but we can always get past them. Jesus Christ promised that. I learned about Jesus at the First Baptist Church on Lyon Street. I am thankful for people like Bud Jones, Dixie Brown, and Webster Smith who touched my life as a boy with being the best Sunday School teachers ever. I was blessed to know Reverend S. T. Skaggs who baptised me when accepting Christ when I was 12. I truly hope the celebration of the real meaning of Christmas touches each and everyone of you. Merry Christmas.

Rhubarb Jones is a Tallapoosa native and member of administrative faculty at Kennesaw State University. Comments and suggestions are welcome at P. O. Box 1001, Tallapoosa, GA 30176 or via email at rhubarbjones@aol.com or rhubarb@kennesaw.edu Past columns are available at www.tallapoosa-journal.com