An Arkansas Christmas

The first Christmas I remember was 50 years ago today. Those memories of Dec. 25, 1963, are vivid because it was my brother’s last Christmas.

We shared a room at our family home in Arkadelphia. There are some fleeting memories from late 1963, when I was 4 and my brother was 9. I remember listening to the radio one night as the Beatles sang “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” We were supposed to be asleep rather than listening to the radio. We tried to reach between our two beds to hold hands, giggling loudly enough to attract our mother’s attention. She turned off the radio, but we continued to giggle.

My most enduring memory of 1963 occurred in the wee hours of Dec. 25. I recall my brother shaking me and saying, “Let’s go see what Santa Claus brought.” I remember sneaking through the darkness to the living room, flipping on a light and seeing the gifts from Santa. Santa didn’t wrap his gifts. My parents wrapped theirs. Bob had a bicycle. I had a red toy firetruck big enough for me to fit inside, along with a fire hat. Acting on my brother’s dare, I peddled the firetruck down the hall that connected our home’s three bedrooms, waking our older sister and our parents. We were ordered back to bed.

There’s a framed photo at our Little Rock home of me in that firetruck. My wife is the daughter of a career fireman, which is one reason she likes the photo. I like it because it reminds me of my last Christmas with Bob. He was killed just more than nine weeks later in an accident. Though there would be a huge void on Christmas mornings (the stocking with his name on it is still at our family home), Dec. 25 remained a big day.

My father wasn’t one to sing carols or buy expensive gifts, but he loved the Christmas season and was determined that my sister and I would enjoy it as well. His primary weekend activity this time of year was quail hunting. I always knew Christmas was approaching when he would carry a saw along with his 20-gauge Browning shotgun. While hunting on the Pennington farm in the Ouachita River bottoms near the Clark-Dallas County line, we would saw down a cedar tree and bring it home.

Cutting the cedar tree wasn’t the only extra activity on those early December bird hunts. We would use our shotguns to shoot mistletoe from oak trees and use the saw to remove branches from holly trees that had plenty of red berries on them. All of that would be hauled back into town and used to decorate the house. A few days later, my father would put colored lights on the big cedar in the front yard. I remember coming home from school one year and being greeted with the disturbing news that one of our beagles had torn up a Frosty the Snowman yard decoration of which I was particularly fond. We always had at least two bird dogs for quail hunting, but they were more work dogs than pets since my dad took bird hunting so seriously. The beagles were the house pets and mainly excelled at getting fat on table scraps and tearing up things such as Frosty.

My mom would be busy in the kitchen on Christmas morning, while my dad made sure there were fires burning in both fireplaces if it was cold. After stoking the fires, he delighted in sitting in a chair in the living room, smoking a pipe and surveying the scene-the cedar tree, the mistletoe, the holly branches, the gifts wrapped under the tree, his children (and later grandchildren) in their pajamas. After opening the gifts, if we were lucky, breakfast would consist of fried quail, grits, biscuits and preserves made from the wild blackberries my dad had picked the previous summer.

I was blessed to have all four of my grandparents live into their 90s. Ernest and Leanna Nelson lived in Benton. W.J. and Bess Caskey lived in Des Arc. We often would pile into the car after breakfast and go to Benton, where we would open gifts and have Christmas dinner (always a baked hen). At about 3 p.m., we would head to Des Arc. There would be even more gift opening and a big supper. Tired and full, I never had a problem falling asleep in one of the old upstairs beds.

Sometimes we would wait until Dec. 26 to go to Benton and Des Arc. On those Christmas afternoons, my dad would ask, “Want to get out of the house for a couple of hours and get the bird dogs some exercise?” We would cross the Ouachita River, seeing children in front of country houses playing with their new toys as we made our way east toward Dalark. The bird hunt would continue until dark as we walked the edges of soybean and cotton fields. After getting home, we would put the dogs in their pen, clean any birds we had killed, and shower. Then, my father would end the day just as he had started it, making sure the fire in the fireplace was burning brightly before sitting down, lighting his pipe and cracking some pecans.

Each family has its Christmas traditions. For me, an Arkansas Christmas is the smell of a freshly cut cedar, wet bird dogs, pipe smoke and the smoke from a wood-burning fireplace. It’s the taste of fried quail and blackberry preserves. It’s the sound of a 20-gauge Browning firing and a saw bringing down a holly branch. And, a half-century later, it’s the memory of a bright red firetruck that belonged to me.

Though no one would ever classify it as a Christmas carol, it’s also the sound of “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” My Christmas wish for you is that you hold someone’s hand who is dear to you today and experience your own uniquely Arkansas Christmas.

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Freelance columnist Rex Nelson is the president of Arkansas’ Independent Colleges and Universities. He’s also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.

Editorial, Pages 19 on 12/25/2013

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