Wayne County Christmas

December, 1946 was exceptionally cold in Wayne County Missouri.  Or at least, that’s how I remember it.  I didn’t know it then, but hard times had taken me there.  My parents were in St. Louis with my brother Keith, born in June of that year.  I had hardly even gotten used to him. Dad was unemployed and putting food on the table had become a daunting task.  It was determined that the burden would be lightened if I spent some time with grandma Wilson on her subsistence farm near Greenville.  Describing this setting as a farm does not accurately reflect reality.  Livestock consisted of a few chickens and one milk cow along with a small vegetable patch.  That was the farm.

 Greenville is and was the county seat of Wayne County, had then and still has a population of about 500. Grandma’s house was situated about a mile from town as the crow flies. 

I joined a family there comprised of Grandma Bessie Wilson, my uncle Cecil (4years my elder), and my aunt Beverly (only a year-and-a-half old).  My grandfather, Clarence Madison Wilson, had died in the spring of the year.  So, it had thus far been a pretty eventful year for me, and Christmas was coming.

I was not uncomfortable in or unfamiliar with my new surroundings.  I loved my grandmother and I knew she loved me.  I had often visited here with my parents and, while Bev was still very young and I had not interacted with her to a great degree, I looked up to and liked Uncle Cecil.  He had sometimes taken me with him to shoot squirrels or to fish the nearby creek.  I had played with my cousins on warm summer days in the big front yard on many previous occasions.

The chore of finding and cutting a Christmas tree was delegated to Cecil and me.  It was mostly Cecil, because as a six-year-old, I really didn’t do much except tag along.  I remember trekking the hilly landscape of the Ozark foothills with him, tramping in the bitter cold through tufts of golden-brown sage grass looking for the perfect cedar tree.  When we found one of the appropriate size, Cecil lay on his back and sawed down the five-foot specimen and we dragged it back to the house.

Decorating the tree was done one evening in the “front room”, basking in the warmth of a pot-bellied stove.  Grandma had popped a lot of corn and she used a needle and thread to string strands of popcorn.  The popcorn had a lightly burnt smell that was not unpleasant.  There were also popcorn balls made with sorghum and honey.  A cardboard star was affixed to the top of the tree.  There were, of course, no lights, since electricity had not yet arrived in the suburbs of Greenville. The finished product was placed in the corner, near the battery-powered Philco radio, almost in the exact spot once occupied by grandpa Wilson’s rocking chair. 

Christmas dawned cold and clear.  I could smell the scents of breakfast from my featherbed.  Cecil had chopped and brought in wood for the stove and I had brought in kindling.  Grandma presided over the kitchen and cooked biscuits, gravy and eggs on the cast-iron wood stove.

My Christmas gifts on that Wednesday morning were a stocking containing an orange, some hard candy and a nickel.  I couldn’t wait to spend that nickel.  By today’s standards, we would be considered poor, but I don’t think we realized it. 

 The best gift of all came later that week when mom, dad, and my little brother came for a visit.
(copyright 2011 Ken Ragan)