The Christmas season is a wondrous and magical thing, and never more so than when a completely unexpected gift comes along. When I opened the first box of Christmas decorations just such an unexpected gift was waiting for me. Atop the various small boxes of ornaments lay a vintage Currier and Ives winter scene card. It was a stray, an escapee from a larger box of long saved holiday cards. I opened the card to find that it was from my cousin, Frank, oh so long ago. He had signed the card, using a sharp pencil and his very best left-handed penmanship, simply “Frankie”.
Cousin Frankie loved Christmas and all things Christmas, especially decorating trees and stringing lights. Some of his happiest memories revolved around our family Christmases. This card brought a flood of happy memories and a few tears. Frankie left us in September.
About the time Frank sent me this card, he and his family were living in Winterfield, not far from where we live now. In the spirit of the season and to celebrate being in the north once again (the family had returned to Marion from Florida earlier that year), Frank began talking Christmas tree before Thanksgiving arrived.
He found that by employing the time-tested ‘wear-mom-down’ method of inquiring several times daily about a tree to work best. His mom relented by December 1 and Frank was off, dressed like this was the North Pole, a saw in hand. He critically inspected at least fifteen trees before he settled upon a Jack Spratt’s wife kind of tree; short, lumpy in places, and big around at the bottom. And it was a Jack pine, not wildly popular for Christmas tree use in these parts, but Frank liked them and it suited his plan.
With the tree taking up a big share of their living room, Frank happily strung lights and garland, stuffed copious amounts of angel hair in the boughs, hung a lot of shiny ornaments amid it all and draped old fashioned icicles from top to bottom. The angel hair around the big colored lights made it all take on a glow, almost like a wintry fog. It was truly amazing.
Our family is sure that Frank was a born pro with Christmas lights and illumination, a real Clark Griswold before his time. He was a perfectionist with trees and eaves alike. The bulbs in their strings were lined up in a certain repeating color order and no wires were twisted. Each bulb stood perfectly straight on a tree and hung likewise from the eaves. If bubble lights were involved, none dare refuse to bubble or nod as the season progressed. They stood at attention.
Our Aunt Lola, being a forward thinking decorator, purchased a silver aluminum tree the year they appeared on the market. She bought the whole package; six foot tree on a revolving stand, the revolving color wheel, and shiny new plastic orbs and bells, in the same colors as those of the wheel, to decorate it.
Wisely she enlisted Frank to assemble the tree, branch by branch. He took great pleasure in his job and of course, made sure that the color wheel was placed in the perfect spot to show off the tree best. It was quite an impressive sight, particularly on a snowy evening, shining like a beacon from her Sixth Street family room window. The perfectly placed lights on her shrubs were courtesy of Frank too.
Twenty-five or so years ago, on his annual pre-Christmas visit to us, Frank and I ‘lit’ an outdoor tree in the Pines. We went out in wet, falling snow and cut a tall Jack pine. We tied it to a post in the yard and proceeded to wrap as many strings of big, old Christmas lights on it as we could. It was indeed a thing of beauty, glowing in the night in the snowy Pines. It reminded us both of the trees my dad put up at the Sinclair on corner of Main and Mill when we were kids.
The twelve-year-old Frankie loved Christmas just as much as the grown Frank did. His love of the magic of the season, of all things Christmas and winter never waned. Even when he no longer did a tree, he always managed a few lights.
Frankie’s Currier and Ives Christmas card from so long ago brought me the sweet gift of remembrance. Its appearance might just explain my urge to spread multicolored LED lights about the yard.
This week’s photo is of 7 month old Frank Berry and his 4 year old sister Sandy at our Aunt Lola’s house on Blevins Street, Christmas 1950. Frankie is certainly delighted with his first Christmas.