family memories

Comfy, Cozy Christmas. Christmas memories: Our trips to North Carolina

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 12 Comments

Cold air from the open car doors bit my nose and cheeks as Dad packed packages and suitcases like a game of Tetris.

Next to me, my teenage brother was already grumbling about the upcoming long drive. He was wearing a set of headphones and a Walkman, U2 blaring through the speakers.

This was the beginning of our annual trip from Pennsylvania to North Carolina, where Mom was from and her family still lived.

I don’t remember how my brother and I kept ourselves entertained for that eight-to-ten-hour drive. I know we argued part of the time. The other part was probably spent listening to music and me playing with my stuffed animals. I didn’t read because reading in the car made me car sick and still does. When I was older, I may have written in my journal, took photographs, or drawn.

Mom still likes to tell the story (often) of how one year, after we attended a service at a church an hour from us the pastor’s wife asked how she could pray for us as we started our journey. Mom asked her to pray that we children would get along.

The pastor’s wife prayed that we children would sleep soundly the entire drive and that would keep the peace. We did sleep the entire trip — all the way to North Carolina, but let me say, we did leave in the middle of the night that year so, yeah, of course we slept. Still, I do remember how I felt like I was in a coma that year and how even trying to wake up to see where we were lasted only a short time because I’d knock right back out again – even when it was morning and we could have woken up.

I’m sure my mom needed the prayers for us to get along because my brother was the issue, by the way, and not me.

We always knew when we were in North Carolina. It had a certain smell to it – a smell of pine is how I describe it. Plus it was warmer than where we had come from.

We almost never had a cold Christmas in North Carolina.

There are eight years between my brother and me so there were many Christmases that I went with my parents without him, probably because he was in college or married.

One Christmas it snowed when we were in North Carolina. It snowed on our drive partway through the state until we reached Jacksonville, where Mom’s family lived.

Once we hit grandma’s neighborhood it was fun, yet not fun, to watch drivers slide all over the road because they weren’t used to the heavy snow. Dad, a born and raised Northerner, had to show some of them how to get unstuck out of snowbanks without digging themselves in further and the right way to stop in icy conditions.

In my mind the snow piled up in crazy amounts on my grandmother’s street and around her house, which may or may not be accurate. It may just be my memory inflating it. I’ll have to ask my parents. All I know is that we were usually in short sleeves at Christmastime in North Carolina so that was a very weird year.

My grandparents’ air conditioning was usually running full force all of the time, even on Christmas Day.

Leaves from pine trees crunched under our feet in her small backyard and everything smelled warm and inviting. Sometimes the whir of helicopter propellers overhead would fill the air. These were military helicopters from Camp LeJune – located less than half a mile away.

My grandparents lived in a neighborhood with houses built close to each other, which was different for me since I’d grown up in a house surrounded by woods and little else.

Before my grandfather passed away, I remember arriving late at night and seeing bowls of oranges and nuts under the Christmas tree, illuminated only by the lights from the tree and maybe from my grandmother’s Christmas village.

Grandpa always had to have oranges at Christmas and while that tradition continued after he passed away, I don’t remember it as much as when he was alive.

The house was always decorated when we arrived and smelled vaguely of cooked collared greens, which Grandma or my aunt Dianne were getting ready for Christmas dinner.

In later years my aunt also made sausage balls, which is a tradition we continue to this day in her memory. Gifts were already sitting under the tree when we arrived most years.

I don’t remember a lot about the gifts we received from my grandparents except the year my grandfather gave me a Santa Claus with a Pepsi logo on his big black belt. My cousin received Mrs. Claus and I was always jealous because I wanted the Mrs. and not the Mr.

I was never big on Santa. I knew from a young age that he wasn’t real. Mom had always felt it was important I understand the real reason for the season and that Santa had come from a real historical figure but that it was Jesus we celebrated that day.

One year Grandpa bought us both “bear rugs.” They weren’t real, of course, but they were rugs that looked like bears. Mine was a panda.

There are complex feelings about my grandpa in my family. He wasn’t a nice man when my mom and her sisters were growing up. He wasn’t a nice man at times after that either. He mellowed later and tried to make up for the times he wasn’t a nice man but part of the family still resented him for things he had said and done when his daughters were young.

I have mixed memories of Grandpa. I have memories of him loving Christmas and giving his grandchildren gifts and I have a vivid memory of him getting mad at me very quickly when I wouldn’t pose just right for the photos he was taking with his new Polaroid camera.

I wish I had been older when he was alive and could have even better memories. I can tell from the smiling photos I’ve seen now that I am older, he wasn’t always miserable and in fact had a lot of happy moments – especially at Christmas.

On Christmas Day, my other aunt, mom’s other sister, would arrive with her family and, though I hate to speak ill of the dead, they took over the house when they arrived. Whatever bothered them had to be rectified. If it was too hot for them, they demanded the AC be turned up. If they were too cold, which didn’t happen often, the AC had to be turned down. If something was too loud on the TV – which it always was for them – they demanded that it be turned down.

If they were hungry, we ate. If they’d just eaten then we had to wait.

If they were thirsty then we needed to make the sweet tea  with a ton of ice – stat.

When I became a teenager, I found myself sitting inside whatever room my parents were staying in to avoid the onslaught of their presence. Once they settled in and down, I snuck out and the rest of the visit was usually pleasant. Some of the hardest laughing sessions I had were with my aunt, uncle and two cousins.

My female cousin, closest to my age, was hot and cold. Some years she was friendly and the next she was less-so. I never knew what I was going to get. We only saw each other once a year so I was fine if she didn’t think we should be best buddies. She was very girly – with make up and doing her hair and dressing up. I was more of a tomboy who’d rather be drawing or journaling or reading a book than caring about what I looked like.

When I think back to Christmases with her as a teenager, I most commonly picture her with her nose in the air. I know. I’m horrible, but that’s how she was until her ice began to melt as the day went on. When she started dating it was ten times worse.

Once she warmed up, setting her ice queen persona aside, we would laugh and draw together and make memories that I try to hold on to when I now think of the negativity that later developed between us.

On the other side of the coin, my male cousin was the same every year and never seemed to make everyone act a certain way before he offered his affection.

We normally waited to open gifts until after my aunt and uncle and cousin arrived. They had their own family gathering first and then would come and we’d have a bigger family gathering. There may have been some negative moments when they first arrived, but when we got into opening gifts and dinner and “visitin’” as they called it down south, there was so much laughter and love I felt like my heart would burst.

I miss those days terribly.

My aunts, my uncle, and my grandparents are all gone now. I no longer speak to my cousins for a variety of reasons, partly physical distance between us.

What I wouldn’t give to sit in those rooms again with them all alive and laughing.

I am grateful for the memories I do have, though.

When I close my eyes, I can see Aunt Dianne at the stove cooking collard greens. She’s laughing and being slightly off-color, but not rude or crass. (She’s the aunt who later moved in with my parents and who I was able to grow close to during that time.)

My great aunt Peggy has just breezed in the front door with a pecan pie and a debate about how to pronounce “pecan” is launched.

Behind her is my uncle Johnny laughing that deep, hearty laugh he had as he grabs my dad’s hand and shakes it firmly. They used to be roommates in the Air Force (which is how my dad met my mom since Johnny was dating Peggy, Mom’s aunt, who is very close in age to her).

Aunt Joan and Uncle Mike are in the living room by the tree singing. Uncle Mike is playing his keyboard. Aunt Joan is singing in that deep, but beautiful vibrato she had.

My cousin Aaron is playing a video game on his portable TV and his sister is checking her makeup with her new mirror and makeup kit.

My grandma is in the kitchen at the table, watching it all unfold and talking about her latest conversation with Jesus. (She literally spoke to Jesus. I’m not mocking her. She was in constant conversation with him. Sometimes out loud.)

Mom is helping with dinner and anything else she needs to help with because she loves to be there for others.

Dad is in the back bedroom doing last-minute gift wrapping (a common theme for our family), wearing a sweatshirt that reads, “Wise Men Still Seek Him.”

My brother is watching an old movie in Dianne’s room and I’m sitting on the loveseat writing about it all so 20 years from then I don’t forget it because remembering it all is what helps to keep not only my family members alive but the Christmas spirit in me alive.

This post is part of our Comfy, Cozy Christmas. Don’t forget to share your Christmas memory posts or any posts related to Christmas on our link up HERE, or at the top of my page.

Voices from the past

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 14 Comments

My son received a record player with all the bells and whistles for his 15th birthday this past weekend. It was a gift from us (his parents) and his grandparents (my parents).

It is a record player that also plays CDs, utilizes Bluetooth (so you can send music off your phone to it), and has an AM/FM radio. The record we ordered him hadn’t arrived yet but he wanted to try the sound out, so he plugged it in and sent a few songs to it from his phone.

In the meantime, my dad drug out a few old records he’d had stored away, and we decided we’d try those.

In the next couple of hours, me and my parents had more fun with that record player than my son did, although later he did say he was actually enjoying our delight. My dad found a couple of records that a cousin of his grandfather’s had recorded in the 60s in Nashville. He and my mom hadn’t heard these songs probably since the 70s or 80s, they weren’t sure when. They had record players over the years but don’t have one now and haven’t since I was a kid probably.

They also had records from a family friend who recorded some gospel songs and enjoyed listening to those too. And then I found an LP of With or Without You by U2, which my brother owned and we put that on for a listen too.

I ended up using my phone to record the songs by my dad’s cousin for my dad to share on Facebook. The player does have the capability of transferring from vinyl to mp3 but we have to install the software to a computer first so we decided to record a video on my phone instead.

The image isn’t steady because I’m dealing with vertigo again and it was really bad while I was trying to record it, but the music was recorded and that was what mattered.

The interesting thing was that my aunt called to wish my son a happy birthday and when I told her about listening to the music, she said she had actually found one of the records in a pile of papers earlier that day. We thought she might like to hear it as well, so we put the phone on speaker and she was able to listen in as well, hearing the music for the first time in probably 30 or 40 years. She turned 89 the next day so it was an early birthday present for her.

It was really a joy for me to see the joy the record player gave to my parents and aunt but also to those on Facebook who are related to the man who was singing and was also delighted to hear the songs.

The singer’s name was Bub Robinson. I wish I knew more about him and the songs. What I do know is that he did not hit the big time, though I wish he had because his voice was better than many of the artists out there today, but he did continue to perform locally, including with his son and I think occasionally with my grandfather, who was also a singer.

Now if we could find the records that feature my grandfather singing, I would be over the moon. He died when I was two and I’m sure I’ve heard recordings of him before because I can hear his voice in my mind somehow. He was sick with cancer when I was a baby and my mom said I was afraid of him because of his deep voice but that right before he died (in a bed at the home my parents now live in), I leaned over and kissed his cheek. She said he was delighted.

My dad has the records somewhere of Grandpa singing, he thinks, and he also has reel-to-reel home movies from the 60s of my grandparents which I really hope to see before the year is out.

If anyone knows where an old projector can be purchased, let me know in the comments. It would her nice to have another afternoon of delving into the past but this time we won’t steal my kid’s birthday gift to do it.

My Grandfather’s Pipe

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 20 Comments

I stole this column from my husband, which he wrote for his weekly newspaper column two months ago. I thought my blog readers would like it since a lot of you are like me and like the sentimental.

By Warren Howeler, originally published in The Rocket-Courier, October 2020

Everyone has those memories that are triggered by external stimuli.

It can be a glimpse of something, a taste, or, in my case, a smell.

The smell that I’m speaking of is pipe tobacco, specifically, the kind that my grandfather used to smoke while I was a child.

The smell of my grandfather’s pipe tobacco takes me back to my early childhood, before I moved to California and eventually, later, to PA.

One of my earliest memories stems from my grandfather’s pipe. I would always be greeted by that scent whenever I would enter my grandparents’ old home in Hinsdale, IL.

Since my parents divorced when I was extremely young, my grandfather was the only father figure I had growing up.

One of the most treasured photos I have is one of myself at two years old, sitting in my grandfather’s lap. He was smiling down at me, his pipe in his hand, and I’m looking up at him smiling, holding my (toy) pipe in mine.

That photo perfectly encapsulates my life—I always tried to emulate my grandfather because of how much I respected him— and I still do.

When I was younger, he was a towering giant—a man who could do no wrong. He cooked. He cleaned. He worked hard. He took care of my grandmother. He helped out my immediate family when we were struggling. He always spoiled both my sister and me when we were kids (later he would do the same thing for his great-grandkids).

My opinion of him never changed from when I was a kid. I was always in awe of him. He still worked hard in his retirement, growing a garden that was the talk of the town in South Waverly, and taking care of my grandmother, which became even more of a challenge as she got older and the Alzheimer’s ravaged her mind resulting in her becoming mostly bedridden in her final years.

My grandfather was always the first one I would go to whenever I had news to share or needed advice. In fact, my grandfather was the first member of my family to know I was engaged, and later, he honored me by serving as my best man.

My grandfather stopped smoking while I was in my five-year exile in California.

I didn’t think much about the missing pipe until several years ago when I went into his basement.

Let me set the stage—my son, Jonathan, was about five at the time, and, a couple of weeks earlier, my grandfather had drug out my old Legos to give to him.

On this day, Jonathan wanted to see if great-grandpa had any more toys in his basement. A kid can hope, right?

So, all three of us went down to investigate.

In one of the cases we opened there was a tin. Neither my grandfather nor I knew what was in it.

I opened it—and was blasted with a smell that I hadn’t encountered in decades.

The tin contained not only several of my grandfather’s old pipes but also some of his old tobacco.

I started tearing up at that point and had to settle my emotions before I asked him if I could keep what we had found. In his usual, short-on-words-style he said, “Sure.”

While my son was disappointed that we didn’t find any more toys, I was ecstatic by my discovery and couldn’t wait to tell my wife about it.

My grandfather passed away about a year later. During the funeral, I slipped one of the pipes into his sport coat.

I still have the tin and its contents today. One of those pipes is on my desk as I type this.

At times when I’m feeling stressed or can’t come up with the word I need when I’m writing, I grab that pipe and either tap the tip of it against my thumb or inhale the lingering scent of tobacco that still permeates the head of it.

The feel of it in my hand, coupled with the smell, is calming to me. But it also has another purpose— to serve as a reminder of some of the happiest memories of my childhood.

Next to the girl and her dog

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 3 Comments

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I posted this photo of my daughter and our dog on Facebook recently and my dad commented the following under it:

Next to the girl collecting Easter eggs with her dog stands a pair of sawhorses that belonged to her great great grandfather. Just to the left of them is a gnarly maple with different bark than the other maples. Behind her is a beautiful tall always liked ash. It is yellowed pale and almost dead now from the ash tree bores that have destroyed most all of Pennsylvania’s ash. To the right just out of focus is a large stone over the grave of one of her mother’s cats.

There is also a small dogwood tree planted by her grandfather nearby. Beyond that are some rotted boards of the dog house he built when nine years of age or so he claims.  A shag-bark hickory stood near there and fifty yards above that spot stood a balsa tree, the largest tree in the lot. Seventy-five feet behind the girl is a hand dug well that is now covered with heavy steel plates. This well gravity fed the house and chicken coops. Another well hidden just over the stone wall property line has a large stone covering it.

Just beyond the fence once stood one chicken coop. Water would be hand carried to that one as it was not downhill enough for gravity feed. Hid in the brush 100 feet to the left of the sawhorse is the foundation remains of the spring-cooled milk house. Also, the corn crib was near there. The granary still remains in that spot. A week later as this is being written the buds are opening to vivid green leaves, the forsythia flowers are bright yellow and life goes on.