The Christmas Letters Read online

  My dear Bill remains as good-natured and sweet as ever despite our financial problems. Those clear brown eyes of his are always fixed upon the Future, full of hope. Now he is trying something new, called soybeans. The government is urging everybody to plant them. They are the crop of the future apparently, to be used in a lot of different ways, though they are not a bit good to cook with, tasting awful.

  By the way we sent you a tin of peanuts on the train, I hope you got them in time for Christmas. It still never really seems like Christmas to me down here, even now, for it scarcely snows and of course I never get over missing the mountains. Yet I hasten to say I am a Happy Woman, for the longer I live with Bill, the more I love and respect him, as he is a truly good man. He would give anybody the very shirt off his back, he is famous for it.

  And Bill is fun, too, I hasten to add, for pure goodness can wear on a person over time. Why, just the other night, for instance, he came in and slipped up on me from behind, and kissed my ear and untied my apron, and announced that we were going dancing.

  “Dancing!” I said. “Why, where will we do that?” for there is no place around here to dance.

  “Right here,” Bill said with a whoop, “at Uncle Bill’s Hot Spot,” and then he produced the Christmas gift which he had bought for me in town that day, a beautiful brand new Philco Radio. He just couldn’t wait until Christmas to give it to me! He plugged it in and turned it on, and soon the kitchen was filled with the lively music of Benny Goodman. Bill twirled me around and then we were jitterbug-ging like crazy, you know that both of us are real good dancers. After that came another tune, and then another. We danced on and on as the children crept into the kitchen one after another, Mary and Joe holding hands, while all the water boiled out of my potatoes and they burned up, I even had to throw away the pan. “Never mind!” Bill said, putting on my apron himself to cook us a big breakfast, bacon and eggs being the only food he knows how to cook. “Go on, honey!” he said to me. “Go take a nice long bath, I’ll call you when breakfast is ready.”

  “Breakfast!” Mrs. Pickett fluttered into the kitchen like a little old moth, clinging to the cabinets. “Why, what in the world! Birdie, where do you think you’re going?” The last thing I saw was her scandalized old face as I headed off down the hall to draw up a deep bath, where I had a good laugh all by myself, in a ton of bubbles.

  So you see that Bill has not been beat down yet by all our misfortunes with the farm, and remains near Perfect in my eyes. I just wish he would come to church with me but I can’t get him to, at least not yet. So I take my precious children, and pray for us all, and remain

  Your loving,

  Birdie

  P.S. Mama, it’s fine with me that you pass my Christmas letters around if you want to. And since I know you are expecting another recipe from me, here it is, courtesy of Mrs. Eugenia Goodwillie at church, who is fat as can be, and always wears this bright green hat. I wish you could see her! Anyway, here goes —we have got a real tradition now, haven’t we?

  MRS. GOODWILLIE’S BIBLE CAKE

  1 cup butter (Judges 5:25)

  3½ cups flour (I Kings 4:22)

  3 cups sugar (Jeremiah 6:20)

  2 cups raisins (I Samuel 30:12)

  2 cups figs (I Samuel 30:12)

  1 cup water (Genesis 24:17)

  1 cup almonds (Genesis 43:11)

  6 eggs (Isaiah 10:14)

  1 tsp. honey (Exodus 16:31)

  pinch of salt (Leviticus 2:13)

  2 tsp. baking powder (I Corinthians 5:6)

  spice to taste (I Kings 10:10)

  Follow Solomon’s advice for making good boys and girls and you will have a good cake (Proverbs 23:14).

  Christmas 1956

  To Mama and Daddy, Rachel and Robert, and Other Dear Family and Friends,

  I know you will excuse the lack of a Christmas letter from me last year, when you hear what we have been through, and do we ever have some Big News for you!

  I was just thinking how God never sends us more than we can bear, and how what appears as Calamity can often be a blessing in disguise.

  First, the Calamity of spring before last—which you know about already, but I want to tell you just how it was when it happened, so you will know how we felt at the time, and what it is like to be in a Flood. The first thing is, it does not happen all at once. It takes days. Days and days and days of too much rain, it is just a conversation piece for a while, as in, “Have you ever seen so much rain?” But then—and you are not sure exactly when this starts to hap-pen—you start feeling Blue, as there is never much sun to be seen, and the children start to get on your nerves. And then there comes the time that all conversation ceases whenever the rain starts up again on the old tin roof, and Bill puts down his newspaper, and stands, and starts to pace back and forth in the hall.

  There are respites, of course. A morning, an afternoon of no rain for a change, when the men walk down to the end of the road and stand on the bank smoking cigarettes and looking out over the river, and nobody’s talking. By then the crops have been flooded out once, and it’s too wet to plant again. And it just keeps on raining, a light sprinkle, then a downpour, then a quick gusty shower, then another sprinkle. . . . But it never stops, not really, and this goes on for a month. On flat land, a Flood is a long time coming.

  And in the meantime, everything changes. The river goes from being merely the distant scenic backdrop of the landscape to become an awful Force in and of itself, still slow but growing in speed and power every day, inching up its banks, with brown churning eddies and whirlpools and currents now in its broad expanse, so that to stand and watch it is to watch some huge and strong and ever-changing Monster come slowly to life. The willows on the banks stand half-submerged, trailing their branches forlornly downstream. One day the old boat shed that stood at the end of the road is gone, simply gone, and then the end of the road is gone too. Now we sit on chairs in the yard to watch the river, and now it is almost like a movie, something different every few minutes, as somebody’s doghouse floats past, then a washtub, a chair, logs and debris, a roof, a man’s straw hat, a rocking horse.

  Word comes from everywhere: the bridge is out at Bar-berville, they are sandbagging at Duncan, they are already evacuating Little Point, downriver. We are glued to the radio. I start collecting rainwater. In the gathering excitement, the children run wild. And more news comes: they are evacuating Powell’s Neck, old man Burgess won’t leave, they tie him up and carry him out on a stretcher, his daughter has signed a paper. Miss Treadway, the piano teacher, is in hysterics, they have taken her to the Hospital.

  Bill’s mother remains surprisingly calm in the face of this Disaster, in fact it comes to me that she is actually enjoying all the excitement. Her eyes glow like lamps in her yellow face and she never leaves the porch where she sits in state on the glider, wrapped up in blankets and wearing her Sunday hat, chatting with all who come by. For the first time ever, Bill is short with her, cutting her off in mid-sentence as she rambles on and on.

  Not only that, but he spanks Ruthie—something he has never done before.

  Of course Ruthie did scare us all to death by disappearing like that, gone for over two hours without thinking to tell any of us that she was going to see her little friend, whose parents had picked her up in a car and taken her home for a visit. We were frantic. Bill paddled her good, until everybody was crying, Joe above all, pulling at his daddy until Bill smacked him too, causing Joe to disappear for the rest of the afternoon. Bill was not himself. He seemed exhausted when it was over, a man in a daze. He went upstairs and lay down on our bed like a Corpse in a coffin, very stiff, with his hands folded up on his chest. I did not dare to mention the mud on the quilt, I believe we both knew by then that it would not matter. I tiptoed over to kiss my Bill but his face was Stone, and he lay exactly like that until the sheriff came to the door a few hours later and said that we would have to leave.

  In a way, this was a relief. Bill got up. The children suddenly tur
ned into little Angels, very helpful, and we all worked with a common purpose, loading up the car and truck, carrying everything else upstairs. We packed the attic full, and that room up under the eaves where I had stayed with my little Mary so long ago.

  One of the last things I did before we left was to look out my little round window again, at a whole world gone wild, the mysterious dark river that I had loved, which had held so much promise somehow, now turned against us— wide, yellow, and Evil, rising every hour up the long green bank with its edging of lacy froth. The sun was out by the time we left, but it made no difference, of course, as the river was on the rise.

  I couldn’t believe it—suddenly, it had turned into the prettiest afternoon. Joe and Mary whispered to each other all the way to Cartersville, playing their games, off in their own little world, and I was just as glad of it, for the Real World seemed too harsh that day for children, and I knew I was powerless to protect them, or any of us, from it.

  For the first time in my life, I questioned God’s wisdom and His will, for I had prayed to Him all along, and yet He had done nothing, and had allowed this to happen to us. I was full of bitterness, and the bright sunshiny day only seemed to make it worse in my estimation, as if He was mocking me. We took shelter at the Presbyterian Church in Pasquotank, which was far enough inland to be judged safe. There we found sandwiches and coffee, and other children for our children to play with, and I must say that Bill’s mother seemed to enjoy the whole experience enormously.

  I did not. My mind was filled with what must be happening back at home, and I remained cut off from my beloved husband, as from God. Bill went back out directly in the truck with the other men, and came back in the late afternoon with a set gray face. “It is over, Birdie,” he said, and turned away, but then in the night on the hard church floor, he broke and started crying and so was restored to me, and I thanked God, though I knew we had lost the farm.

  One of the worst things about a flood is that—unlike a fire, which makes a clean sweep of everything—when the waters recede at last, everything is unfortunately Still There, and though it is all ruined beyond hope, there it yet is, to be dealt with. You feel like you ought to clean things up, you ought to be able to use them again, but the truth is, you cannot.

  We had to walk across the muddy fields to our house, for the road was gone, and pull ourselves up through the open door, for the porch was gone. Inside we found a foot of stinking mud throughout the entire first story, and the biggest ugliest Catfish I have ever seen was flopping around on the kitchen floor. At that point, I just sat down in the mud and cried my eyes out. After all the work we— especially Bill—had put into that sorry farm, it broke my heart! At that point Joe caught the Catfish with his bare hands, and Bill killed it with a knife, and they carried it in a croker sack over to the church ladies, who put it in a big pot of chowder which they were making at the church. I couldn’t eat a bite of supper, I couldn’t get the awful picture out of my mind, how it looked as it flopped in the mud on my kitchen floor, with its awful grinning face, its wide smart eyes, those sweeping whiskers, oh I would have nightmares about that Catfish for months to come.

  Well, to make a long story short, we lost the farm.

  But I have to say, if it hadn’t happened, why, we would be out there still, I reckon, both of us, working our fingers to the bone every day, just trying to make ends meet. Bill would never have got up the nerve to get that bank loan and start the dime store. For Necessity truly is the Mother of Invention, as they say.

  So now, here we are living in town, on the other side of that river which has receded of course and now flows within its banks as pretty as you please.

  And our dime store is a real big Success! As some of you have heard from me already. Everybody comes to shop, as there is nothing like it for miles around. Bill sells everything you can think of, from nails to sheets to makeup. We’ve even got a popcorn machine! And a candy counter with candy corn, fudge, jellied orange slices, nonpareils, why you name it.

  And I am the proud proprietor of Birdie’s Lunch, which we have built into one corner of the store. You know how much I have always loved to cook. Well, Birdie’s Lunch is very popular, I have to say. I am open for Breakfast and Lunch only, though some people buy their Supper and carry it home, especially on chicken and dumpling days. My meatloaf is another very popular item. Best of all is, I get to see Bill all day long, not only at supper time, when he is dog tired, as on the farm. And all the children work at the store with us, they all have jobs, and are a big help.

  Last year at Eastertime, we had them all helping us to make Easter baskets. It took me and Bill and everybody else that works for us, plus the kids, we had formed a regular little Assembly Line. This was on a Sunday afternoon after church when the store was closed, several weeks before Easter. It was a cool rainy day as I recall, and I had made some coffee and chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies to give everybody, so we had kind of a Party Atmosphere, and we were all enjoying ourselves. We had boxes of Easter candy and little toy rabbits and bunnies and such as that, yellow and purple cellophane paper which came in long rolls, and several huge cardboard boxes filled with pink cellophane Easter straw. I was the one who tied the bows, I have always been very good at bows. We worked all afternoon. I was so busy, and having such a good time, that I didn’t even notice when Mary and Joe disappeared. Then suddenly it was time to go, and we couldn’t find them anywhere.

  “Mary! Joe!” we called all over the store, and finally here they came, popping right up out of the last box of Easter straw, nearly scaring us all to death! They had crawled down under the straw, and fallen asleep there. Oh how we laughed! We are all enjoying the dime store.

  Mary comes down to the store every day after school. From the very beginning, she has always “taken care of the dolls” for Bill, dusting them and fixing their hair, arranging them on the shelf. She makes up names for them, and a life story for each one. Sometimes I swear I don’t know what will become of our Mary, she is too smart for a little girl. I fear that she may have trouble adjusting to the world because of it. She is certainly “our little scholar,” making straight A’s in school. Why, Mary would rather read than eat! This is absolutely true.

  Meanwhile Ruthie can scarcely sit still long enough to get her homework. She is crazy about Acrobatics and Tap Dancing, which she takes from a Miss Lovett who comes over from Goodlettsville and holds classes at the American Legion twice a week. There are many more opportunities here in town, which we are taking full advantage of.

  Joe is a Boy Scout, for instance, he is so good with his hands and can make anything. Joe puts together the airplane and automobile models for display in the dime store, and sweeps the floor, and Bill pays him.

  More than anything, Bill and I want these children to have the opportunity to go to college, which we never had. So we are all working together, and though the hours are long and sometimes it seems that we will never get this loan paid off, still we are all together, and the future looks bright to me as I see that God had a greater good in mind than we could envision when he sent us that flood, which is why I said at the beginning of this long letter, Calamity can often be a Blessing in Disguise.

  Even old Mrs. Pickett likes our new life. Her personality is much improved. Bill has bought her a hearing aid and a new set of teeth, which make her look exactly like a horse, I have to say, but she sits now on a lawn chair in the front of the dime store talking to everybody, and everybody is amazed by how old she is, and how much she has got to say. Of course, I am not amazed, and I am glad she chooses to place her lawn chair by the Checkout instead of my lunch counter. P.S. Kids love these. They are good for Christmas giving, too, as they will keep in a tin for ages. I have made a ton of them this Christmas season.

  Lots of love and a very

  merry Christmas 1956

  from your busy, busy, busy

  Birdie

  STICKS AND STONES

  ½ cup butter or margarine, melted

  4�
� teaspoons Worcestershire sauce

  1½ teas. salt

  8 cups cereal (Cheerios and Chex)

  1 cup nuts

  1 cup pretzels

  Mix well, bake 1 hour at 250°, stirring every 15 minutes.

  Christmas 1962

  Dear All,

  If I thought I was busy before, I have to say, it is nothing compared to now, what with Mary and Joe in High School, and going off like firecrackers in every direction. I swear, there is so much for kids to do these days! I think it is wonderful. It is surely not a bit like when we were growing up in Blue Gap, and had to work so hard, and then find amusement among ourselves. I can still remember how much I hated to hoe that corn, and how that old burley tobacco would stick to your arms and hands. Those were hard times, I reckon, but they seem sweet to me now, and almost golden somehow, as seen through the haze of the years. Don’t you recall how we all used to sit out on the porch of an evening, and talk? Why, we would talk about everything, I reckon we didn’t have anything else to do, but my, those were some good stories we heard, weren’t they? Don’t you remember Granddaddy telling about the Ghost Dog? And old Aunt Lydia was so funny, without even knowing it. Don’t you remember that story she used to tell about the time when she was coming out of church and some woman behind her, I believe it was old Mrs. Green-leaf, said to her, “Why, Lydia, I’ll swear, honey, you look so pretty from the back!” Don’t you remember Lydia telling that, and then saying, “Now, girls, I don’t know whether I ought to get mad or not!” and asking all us little girls what we thought about it. We got so tickled at her, well it’s all so long ago, isn’t it? It was a Different World.

  And nobody ever sits on the front porch here even though we have got one. We are all too busy, it seems, what with me and Bill down at the dime store all the time, and the kids in and out so fast, so busy with all their activities. When I think of our own front porch now, I think of the screen door slamming all day long. “Don’t slam the door!” I used to call out, “Don’t slam the door!” but now I scarcely bother. It is the pace of Modern Life which has made all the difference, even down here in such a pokey little town as ours. And if anybody today has a moment to sit, they are likely to sit in front of the television, which is wonderful, I have to say, you can always find something to be interested in. Mrs. Pickett has to watch her “story,” as she calls it, every afternoon, this being “Search for Tomorrow.” “Isn’t that Andrea Whiting just awful?” Mrs. Pickett will ask everybody, but she wouldn’t miss a day if it killed her.