Thursday, November 17, 2011

Christmas Past

A very nice blog was left by "Love Your Pet Expo" and it brought back many memories for me. Thanks for posting it.

I am from a large family and Christmas was a time of year that I think my parents did not look forward to. With so many children and so little money we mostly only got one gift and sometimes it was a new piece of clothing. That was fine as we did not go hungry or sleep in the streets. We had all the main items needed to grow up....food, warmth, a roof over our head and mostly love.

On the block where we lived there were 5 other girls from other families and we were always together. Their situation was not like ours but I guess their parents talked to them because we were never called things like poor white trash or needy or anything else. Us girls were a team, where one went all went.

I especially remember one year two of the girls were going to get a bike. I asked my Mom and Dad and all the could say was they were sorry but they could not afford it. One of the girls told her dad and I did not know it but they came to the door on Christmas day with a bike for me. I saw tears in my mothers eyes but did not understand that till years later.

The father of one of the girls was with them. I just loved him. He was a fireman and always so nice to all of us kids. Well seems like my friend told her daddy and they had a bike at the fire station that went unclaimed for 2 months and he ask if he could give it to someone for Christmas. He painted it and fixed minor bumps and it looked new. He had asked my parents if he could do this as I guess he did not want to hurt their feeelings.

A great surprise for me. My brother wanted to be the first to ride it and being younger than me I think he thought it was for all of us and as it turned out the bike was shared as it should have been.

That is the one Christmas that sticks out in my mind. And every year we buy toys and put them in the toys for tots box. Makes my heart feel so good to do this. They are not really expensive toys but some kids really just like to get SOMETHING for Christmas. They don't look at price tags and they can't wait to get them out of the package.

Love Your Pet Expo... thanks so much for your blog as it brought back nice memories for me.

JESUS IS THE REASON FOR THE SEASON

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Great post, CC. I remember something on the news about firefighters fixing up bicycles for inner city kids at Christmas. I wonder if your situation back then started something that went viral and is still growing. Wouldn't that be kewl!

chateycathey said...

Oh yes, it would be great.

CurioCache said...

Wonderful heartwarming story. Thanks for sharing!

kornkountrytreasures said...

What a special memory!bfunny how we remember the "poor" years the most. I think there is a lesson there! Thank you for sharing that.