CHRISTMAS HOF: THE COUNTDOWN

The Christmas HOF, or Hall of Fame, began when your dad gave your mom a new car wrapped in a big bow?

That didn’t happen where I grew up.

The new car back then was a 1968 Volkswagen camper for a family that rarely camped.

But it had its usefulness. Eventually.

There’s nothing like pulling up to the girl’s house in a camper on the first date in 1972.

What would any dad think?

Even if your poor mother didn’t get a gift-wrapped car for Christmas, she got what she wanted: her family.

We’ll be home for Christmas, you can count on us.

 

One wing of my Christmas HOF belongs to the Army Christmas of 1974.

I was a college student who’d dropped out after freshman year to join the all-volunteer Army.

I had company. Hey, Gary.

Like every other college dropout worth a damn, I pledged to return and earn my degree, whatever it might be after two years.

And, like every responsible college dropout who joined the Army, I put part of my pay into the allotment program for direct deposit in my home bank.

‘If I didn’t have all my money, I wouldn’t spend all my money,’ was the idea.

Some guys got paid and started buying tricked out boots, Army Blues, and rings that looked like West Point rings.

They looked good, too. Good for a trainee.

After I got my bank figured out, my next paycheck was a surprise.

The Army decided I meant to put my entire paycheck in the allotment program.

As a result, I had no money.

Since it was the Army, I had clothes, food, and shelter. Just no money for any off-base fun.

So my buddies carried me.

Off-base fun meant wearing the Class A uniform, which identified you to the prostitutes and pimps as a potential customer.

If you were caught in public in anything other than the Class A suit, bad things would happen. How bad? No one knew.

We did learn was that the guy who waved from a downtown balcony with his shirt off and a woman beside him went to sick call after the first weekend leave for a shot.

 

San Antonio Christmas HOF

Like every other dipstick in the 1974 Army I marched out of basic training for AIT, advanced individual training.

I would become a medic in San Antonio’s Fort Sam Houston, home of the Brook Army Burn Center.

My money was still tied up in the allotment program problem, but I was working on it.

So I was still broke.

Was I going home for Christmas? If I was, my parents needed to buy my ticket.

But we weren’t a ‘buy the kid a ticket’ kind of family, and I didn’t ask since I had a brother and sister still at home.

This is when my Christmas HOF began.

 

The only people left on base over the Christmas break were soldiers who had no where else to go.

I found myself with a group detached from family life, from Mom, baseball, and apple pie.

Every morning we stood in formation for the assignment. It was the same assignment all week: go out and pick up trash.

We marched out and looked for trash for two hours, matched back to the barracks, and had the rest of the day as free time.

As a proud college dropout I used the free time to read. And read and read and read. I was a big reader.

There’s something magical about reading from a free library when you’re broke. Stuff hits differently when reading is all you’ve got.

Some of the guys spent the holiday season chugging codeine cough syrup and sleeping all day.

I asked about it. They said it was a sweet ride. I took their word for it.

My idea was to read like I was taking classes all day, get in a run, do some push-ups, and turn in early.

 

Along with the guys in codeine comas were a couple of soldiers who’d bonded based on where they came from.

One came from Hungary. Hey, Gedi.

The other from South Korea. Hey, Pak.

Good guys, tough guys, both black belts in different martial arts.

We talked about judo, taekwondo, and Greco-Roman wrestling.

A year earlier I’d won a state championship and third in the nation for Greco.

We weren’t a super hero team, but it felt close with those guys.

They weren’t going home for Christmas and I explained why I wasn’t.

We went to the PX together where they took turns buying rounds of seventy-cent Lone Star beer in thirty ounce cups.

 

Bob Hope Christmas HOF

I wrote this eight years ago:

 

To get the full effect of Army life I decided to stay in San Antonio over Christmas with the rest of the troops. I also had a pay issue between the Army and my bank where an allotment was supposed to be.

The money wasn’t in the bank and the Army was sure it was sent. In short, I was a broke baby boomer. It felt familiar.

Some of the AIT guys came from places they didn’t want to return to, others came from places like Hungary and Korea. My pals were foreign guys. You learn about other people and places by spending time with them.

I was all about the learning. Still am. That’s what Portland baby boomers are famous for.

Every morning started with a formation outside the barracks, followed by a nice walk to police up areas around the base. Policing up is official talk for picking up trash.

Christmas 1974 was all about trash picking and learning to do it right.

One of the gifts from that time was the early morning views of Texas. The sky and hills lit up each morning like a Christmas card. From dark, to gray, to colors fading in with the sunlight, the beauty was nearly unbearable.

But beauty isn’t for everyone.

The trash picker parade grew smaller each day as more guys went on profile. They’d come down with colds, visit a clinic, cough a lot, and get a bottle of codeine cough syrup.

The same people sleeping through morning formations also slept most of the day, waking up late to work on their cold and get more medicine.

Eventually the barracks looked like a shooting gallery, but instead of addicts nodding off for a corner drool, they had beds to stretch out on.

It wasn’t a real moral booster seeing how dudes spent their down time, but the Bob Hope Christmas Show changed that.

 

Christmas 2023

As the sun sets on yet another year, I’m racking it up in the win column.

One year will come where the Christmas HOF isn’t as important.

People grow older, Christmas feels like too much work, too much unpacking and packing and hanging lights.

That’s not this year, but it was close.

While families grow and spread out, time stays the same, and it’s important to spend Christmas time with loved ones.

And if your house isn’t the Christmas morning house of laughing and cooking, maybe ease back a little?

Or, get busy. I got busy.

I got busy and stopped whining about a Christmas birthday. I’m sixty-nine. Whining from a mature man is unbecoming.

(This is the first time I’ve used ‘unbecoming.’ It sounds better than pathetic.)

This year I’ve got a grand baby born a week before my birthday, and dog born the day after.

I’ve got buddies for the 2023 Christmas HOF to go along with my November crew.

Here’s the deal: However long my Christmas crew is here I want them to a know their old mom and dad are full of gas, or Gives A Sh!t.

There may be a time when nothing changes from season to season, from holiday to holiday, but not this time.

Like the answer mountain climbers give when asked why they climb, “Because it’s there.”

If you have Christmas gear, work it.

Why?

Because it’s there.

What else has been there already?

 

A wonderful ‘dinner spread.’

 

Song.

 

A Special Day.

 

Christmas 2023.

Don’t do it for each other, do it for the Christmas Spirit.

If you don’t have any, look harder.

If you still can’t find that Christmas Spirit, try The Gift Of The Magi.

Put memories of Christmas past aside and make room for new ones.