Month: April 2016

IN SEARCH OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS

The IGY 1957.*

We loaded up the ’53 Studebaker with Dad and Mom and all four kids and headed out of town to a high hill out of reach of the city lights. Dad was taking us on a special field trip. In 1957 there was a period of extreme solar activity going on, and the Northern Lights were flaring; well not down along the 39^th parallel where we were, but the radio announcer said we just might see them on this cold, clear, December 21^st night.

This was Ike’s IGY, International Geophysical Year, and everything was possible.   Rockets with satellites were shooting off into space and measuring things around the globe. Explorers were diving into the depths of the oceans.   Soon, family cars would be flying machines, but in the meantime, the X Rocket Plane with Chuck Yeager at the stick was flying faster than any plane had ever gone. It was a very exciting time to be alive.

It got dark and colder up on the hill. The stars shown brilliantly in the northern sky, and then, around midnight, a blue-green haze rose up along the northern horizon. It wasn’t much, just a degree or two above the line of the earth.   “Look! The Northern Lights,” said Dad. It was disappointing. I had expected more. Dad really couldn’t explain what this light was or why it was there, but the IGY was going to find out and report on the phenomena this very year.

Soon, other interesting things took the place of the northern lights. BB guns, fishing, the cabin project at the Lake of the Ozarks, Christmas. The northern lights did not come back, not that year or any year since, at least not in Columbia, Missouri. Our collective knowledge improved through the IGY and subsequent years. In not too much time, we understood how and why the lights appear, and mystery went away.   But still, I missed seeing them.

 

NOVEMBER, 2014

 

I am sort of retired now and have lots of time for facebook, you know, the world wide social media. Sometime in November, an advertisement started appearing on my facebook feed. Hurtigruten, the Norwegian cruise line was offering Northern Lights cruises in December. One could cruise up and down the Norwegian coast from Bergen to Tromso for six days and have plenty of opportunities to view the northern lights from the upper deck, being as how the entire cruise occurred above the Arctic Circle and the nights were 24 hours long. I thought this might be pretty cool and started sharing the ad with Cheryl.

Now, Cheryl does not like the cold and I have not been successful in persuading her to go on an Alaskan dog sled/igloo adventure, but what the heck. She is a sucker for cruises, and it would fit right in to our annual northern Europe Christmas Shopping Spree. I hinted we could go in search of the Northern Lights, on a ship, then take a short flight to Prague ~ Magical Prague ~ threshold to the underworld Prague. We have fallen in love with Prague in December.   That did it. Abruptly, she decided on the trip and started making arrangements.

I should explain that Cheryl makes all the arrangements for our world travel adventures.   A while back she discovered airline miles programs, and soon was buying several million dollars’ worth of stuff for her regional construction jobs on ‘ miles’ credit cards. In no time at all, we were flying first class everywhere for free. Hotels are generally free, too, with automatic upgrades to reserved suites. We have become very frequent flyers. So she called Hurtigruten USA to make reservations. Unfortunately, the US rep was an idiot who was only vaguely aware of the cruise line’s existence. Cheryl has very limited patience for booking agent idiots, and after a fruitless day, called the main offices in Norway.

There was still an issue to solve. The cruise line was happy to book us for a 6-day trip for $1699. The ad on fb was a special, however, and the trip was advertised as $879. The cruise line argued, but Cheryl pulled up the ad running at that very minute and strongly hinted that maybe some false advertising was going on here. Hurtigruten suddenly saw the error of their ways and accommodated us. Six days from Bergen to Tromso for two, outside cabin. Cheryl set about getting airline reservations and a hotel in Prague.

We were set.   Solid reservations, bags packed and sitting by the back door, a child reserved to drive us to the airport.   Plenty of time to get to the airport.   We are seldom this prepared. So we loaded up and off we went, heading toward the office to get our driver. On the way, Cheryl got on her phone to verify the air travel. Just as well. Part of the flight was on Lufthansa, our (formerly) favorite airline, and the airline pilots had just gone on strike – again – for the 9^th time this year. The entire trip was in jeopardy.

We were set to fly to Chicago, then Frankfurt, then Oslo and a jump to Bergen where we were going to meet Sofie (a former AFS student that lived with us) and her grandparents, and then board the ship for the cruise. The timing was very tight.   We got to the office and Cheryl got on the phone to re-book and flights and the cruise. After 12 hours she got it done. Only now, we would not fly Lufthansa, but United, and go straight to Oslo and then Bergen, a day later. Then the cruise had to be re-booked which was even harder.   Apparently, we could not ship out of Bergen now, but rather Tromso on the north end, and sail south. Cheryl got that done, and then went back to the airline booking to change our route to Olso to Tromso. Got that done, too, so everything was reset, only now we would not be able to meet Sofie and give her Christmas presents to her. We would have to stay a night in Tromso and so booked a room at the Radisson Blue right on the wharf, but would not stay in Bergen.

Oh well. The best laid plans of mice and men gang-aft- agley, as they say in Scotland, or so I have read. Tuesday we had a child, (our children are in their 30’s, so technically they aren’t children, but they still give me the willies driving the car), drive us to the airport, an hour away for us, and got on our way. Cheryl was very satisfied that she had defeated entropy once again. She loves to win, and I think she relishes a fight against entropy. In Chicago we hung out in the first class lounge for a bit and had some snacks for lunch before getting our personalized invitation to join the other first class passengers for the oversees flight. First class is definitely the way to fly if you can manage it. You are treated to a gourmet meal, snacks when you want them, drinks when you want them, newspapers, magazines, TV, and a flat bed with pillows in your little cubicle. If you happen to speak German and are flying Lufthansa 1^st Class, the stewardesses will speak German with you. In fact, they have you in their computers that you like to speak German, so they don’t even ask, knowing who you are before you even take your seat. (Welcome aboard Mrs. Obermiller, Willkommen Herr Obermiller, you are seated in Row 12, seats 1 and 2, on the right side. They even know who you are when you enter the boarding area at the gate and quickly escort you to the 1^st Class waiting area.) Remarkable.   First class makes the long flight a fun preamble to the next adventure.

Some hours later we arrived in Oslo. The sky was clear and the weather temperate, but I had been looking at the forecast for the coastal areas with some angst and wasn’t encouraged. Seemed to be a lot of rain/sleet in the offing. Our transfer time was short, so we did not get to see Sofie, our first foreign exchange student from many years ago. With the change in ship schedule, we also wouldn’t see her in Bergen, but, hey, we had been up here last summer for several days. We boarded our puddle jumper for the short trip to Tromso. I was actually surprised they had an airport in Tromso, way to the north in Norway, way north of the Arctic Circle. We knew, philosophically, that planes fly to Tromso at least once a day, but hey, we were going into the land of the 24 hour midnight. Magnetic compasses don’t work right, and no sun for daytime navigation should the inertial and gps systems fail.

 

IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY DAY

 

At two in the afternoon we dropped down to the airport through a thick blanket of clouds. It was pitch black outside. I don’t really remember much about the airport, except the runway was very short, and that we had to run on ice covered pavement through the sleet and rain to get into the terminal, and the part about getting a taxi, the only way to get to town. We secured our luggage with the dozen or so other passengers, and followed the signs, in Norwegian, outside to a covered ramp going down to a drive. Occasionally, a taxi pulled up and loaded up with passengers. It was sleeting and windy. People wasted no time getting into the taxis from the open waiting area.   Our cab came. It didn’t take much time to get down the valley driving through a mountain tunnel to the center of town and our hotel, the small Radisson Blu. We took note of a recognizable landmark in the plaza in front of the hotel, a Christmas tree lit up with white lights, in case we wanted to go out for a walk in the rain/sleet. My internal north directional sense had failed entirely, so I could get lost. Cheryl does not have a north compass at all and consequently is always lost so it did not matter to her, but we were in a totally unfamiliar town in the pitch black wet day. I get nervous when my directional sense fails.

The cute Norwegian girls behind the counter checked us in, taking note of our gold card status, and promptly upgraded us to their best corner suit on the top floor; that would be the 7^th floor if I recall, with a spectacular view of the fjord right outside our windows. It was typical European eco-friendly cold in the room with typical European unresponsive steam heat. The wind drove the rain/sleet fiercely and loudly against the corner windows, which rattled and leaked air. I opened the curtains for the view of the fjord and saw, right below us, a brilliantly lit up Hurtigruten ship.   Looking for the rest of the spectacular view was difficult. At 2:30 in the afternoon, it was black as coal out, with no relieving lights beyond the ship. We seemed to have booked a stay in the Twilight Zone, where the ambient light is swallowed up by the black beast.

We freshened up and went back to the lobby to see what we could do here for a day and a half. We had noted bus tours up into the mountains on the way in, and talked briefly with the tour guide about the possibility of finding clear skies away from the coast. He assured us the weather would be only partly cloudy in the higher altitudes. Tromso didn’t have much else to offer, so we went ahead and booked the tour for the afternoon of the following day, and went for a walk in the dark and stormy day/night. It was very strange. After perusing a few shops and dodging children heading home from school, we ducked into a seafood restaurant on the wharf to get out of the sleet. The entrance was guarded by a mounted head of a huge toothy monk fish.   It had rows of sharp teeth around the jaws, then a second set of smaller toothy jaws around the large esophagus inside.   Just like an alien. Clearly, nothing this fish chose to eat was going to escape that mouth.

Dinner was good. We had some sort of fish, only fish was offered, with caviar, generous portions of caviar. Very tasty, and left to wander around some more, edging past the ugly fish head, but taking some photos this time for a visual record. Outside it was dark, but the rain/sleet had stopped.   We had the rest of the evening to get through, so we wandered the streets, eventually finding a movie theater.   That might work, so we went to a movie, Fury, with Brad Pitt. All the theaters were underground, I guess to be eco-friendly, or just to get out of the wind. The movie, much ballyhooed by the media, was a horrible WW2 war story about a tank crew. It had no redeeming features and left us feeling ill.

 

IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT

 

It was now late in the evening, and we wandered down the hill to the hotel, shopping along the way. A lot of people were out and about and the shops were all open. In one shop, we admired a reindeer pelt and decided to buy it for our son-in-law for Christmas. Nate is a big deer hunter, but not reindeers. He would love the pelt. Down at the wharf, we had dinner at the same restaurant with the fish head guard, and then retired for the night. Well, that’s not exactly correct. Not only had it been night since we got here, but our internal clocks were still on Kansas City time, where it was just midafternoon. Oh well, we were tired anyway. We bundled up in our cold corner room as the sleet came up again and pounded the windows. The ship that had been tied up below was gone now, so there was simply nothing at all to see outside. Pitch black. Furthermore, North had gone away. I was uncomfortably disoriented.

The next day we hooked up with the northern lights tour bus along with maybe 15 other people and took off for the mountains. We were heading for a way station on the road between Finland and Norway where we would stop and get some fabulous photos and delicious snacks. It took two weary hours to get to the destination on the snow and ice packed roads. It sleeted, snowed and rained, not necessarily in that order all the way. No signs of life along the road, no traffic, just pine forest covered in deep snow. Not a place to have engine trouble. The   way station was a small 15’ by 24’ two story shack. The lower level was dug into the rock, the upper level was short wall construction with a steeply pitched roof. A ramp led up to the upper level where we were to enjoy a break in our fruitless search. The ramp was covered with ice and snow and went up on an exciting 45-degree angle. No handy railing. Everyone made it, and we were treated to a short talk about the place, snacks and hot beverages, which were necessary for a foray outside where, we were assured, the northern lights would soon be in evidence.

We all went out, the photophiles getting the settings right on their expensive cameras and setting up tripods. I didn’t bring my tripod, but it didn’t matter. The clouds and snow went on unabated. Soon some kids from the Philippines started a snowball fight.   They had never seen snow before.   I kept my lens cover on while we hung around a fire behind a windbreak. We got cold and went back inside the shack for more cocoa. The group was getting a little surly by this time, so the driver decided we should get back in the bus and keep driving to Finland, where surely we would be blessed by a glimpse of the lights. Finland. It never occurred to me we might go into the land of the frost giants.

We went on up the road for another half an hour and, indeed came to the Finnish border, marked by a stone cairn and a road sign. There was nothing else there. We all got out and took photos of Finland in the driving snow looking for frost giants, the bus driver warning us to not walk around in the road because the traffic would not be able to see us, and not to stray into the pine forest where we would surely get snatched, and don’t whistle because it was stormy enough already, and one of us might have Finnish ancestors. (I do.) We had seen no traffic since we left the way station, but you never know. I did some whistling and wandered off to the forest to answer a call of nature and look for wolves and/or frost giants. It was great fun. I can add another country to my list of countries I have visited. Cheryl had had enough of the snow and stayed in the bus, so can’t claim to have visited Finland and seen the frost giants. Her loss. They were cool….or even cold. I took photos. We started back to Tromso.

 

The ride back to civilization was long. We napped a bit, but all the cocoa wanted out and we were both squirming. Finally back to the hotel, we found messages for Cheryl. Cheryl conducts business from wherever we happen to be, even though we happened to be a short jump from the North Pole. The issue was a   one hundred thirty thousand dollar purchase of two dump trucks. Her bank had to have her signature on the loan documents.   The boys couldn’t wait till we returned, so messages and faxes went back and forth from the front desk to Kansas City until all was signed and notarized. The hotel girls were enormously satisfied having assisted an important American woman business owner conduct business with Kansas City, admiring the way she ordered her bankers around. Now, we just had to walk our luggage around the corner to the pier and our next activity. This activity, sponsored by the ship, was a short ride on a bus to an A-frame church on top of the local mountain, and a midnight concert. Hurtigruten was trying to butter us up. We stuck our luggage in the bus, and along with perhaps 20 other passengers took off. The concert was good, I think. I was so tired by then that my memory fails me. The bus got us back to the ship by 1:30 a.m. and we boarded and found our cabin.

I must describe the ship Polarlys. It was tiny compared to Caribbean cruise ships. Five decks and a dining room was about it. A car deck in the hold because it doubled as a coastal ferry. It could carry 600 passengers, but on this trip only had 30 or 40. Our cabin was 6 feet by 10 feet. No closet, fold down bunks 20 inches wide and hard as rock, and a toilet/shower/sink cubicle. No place to store your suitcases. The window looked out on the underside of a lifeboat. We tried a bunk to see if we could sleep together spooned up. No go. Cold steel wall on one side and a cold steel curb with a sharp edge on the other. Most of the voyage would wind amongst the coastal islands and fjords’ protected from the Arctic Ocean. Parts of the voyage were not protected, but I will get to that later. This ship had no gyro-stabilizers. I suppose the Viking long boats did not have stabilizers, either. I suppose gyro-stabilizers would just rip right out of their mountings and go careening around the hold. In any case, on this ship, as we would soon find, one gets to experience the sea in all its’ tumultuous glory.

We moved out at 6:00 a.m. and headed down the coast to our first stop and a shore excursion. Apparently, the Norwegians lose all sense of night and day and length of sleeping time during the long winter night.   We were taking a bus ride across a peninsula through a village and stopping at the oldest stone church in the north. This excursion would leave promptly at 7:00 a.m. Not much time for sleeping, but who needs it. The ship docked at Harstad on the Trondene Peninsula and let us off with maybe 30 others.   We got on a bus and headed for Sortland. On the way we visited the White Church, reputed to be the oldest and farthest north stone church. It was cool. Small, like it was an outpost of the Catholic Church in the land of the midnight sun. It dated to around 1300, and had an interesting feature. The main door was carved with all sorts of graffiti. As opposed to most, this graffiti actually meant something. It seems that landowners in olden times liked to donate property to the church, and when they did, their house sign was carved in the door. There was also an iron ‘Elle’ or yardstick hanging on the door which was the official City measuring device. It was full daylight when we got to the church, but completely dark out. Floodlights had been placed to light the ancient cemetery in the churchyard. A few hundred yards away was a museum with lots of Viking era stuff. Some of it looked pretty fresh, like it was just taken in a raid or something.

After a nice snack at the museum, we headed on to a ferry crossing the Gullesfjord, and then followed the Sigerfjord on to Sortland. Our tour guide gave us a running account of every small building we passed on the way, and at one point made everyone get out and walk across a short bridge and up a hill to where he parked waiting for us. I somehow missed the point of this forced march, but I am sure it was significant in some way. Somehow, we found the Polarlys at Sortland in the dark and only mildly rainy skies.   The ship had gone around the peninsula, venturing out into the Arctic Ocean, perhaps to avoid prematurely shocking the guests. It worked, because on the way southwest along the coast toward Trondheim, we weaved through the fjords in relatively calm water.

Perhaps I should mention my susceptibility to seasickness.   I avoid going out on the ocean like the plague, particularly on small boats, like fishing boats, or this one.   I carry a scopolamine patch in my billfold like teenage boys carry condoms, only in my case I hope to not be in a position to need one. So we ate lunch and dinner in the only restaurant and retired from exhaustion.   The food was OK, but just OK.   Nothing too savory or unusual.   We had a couple of days to Trondheim, plenty of time for the clouds and rain/sleet to break up and see the glorious Northern Lights. After we retired, an announcement was made that the captain had, indeed, seen the lights. So we got up, put on our warmest clothes, and headed for deck 6, the top of the ship.

 

The clouds had broken some, and we hung around for half an hour freezing our butts off with several other passengers looking at the sky like turkeys looking at rain falling. Cameras all ready, tripods out, and not a glimmer overhead. Looking back north toward the town, lights gleamed along the shoreline, and perhaps there was a break in the cloud cover on the horizon. I took a long exposure telephoto shot of this, holding the camera as still as I could, because someone said one could sometimes see the northern lights only with a camera. After we got home, I reviewed the few shots I took and came to this one. To my great surprise, there were lights, northern lights. Too bad we couldn’t see them at the time, but here they are. We retired again, it now being 1:00 a.m., and went down to try for some sleep on the 4-inch mattress and steel shelf that was bed. Man, are these Norwegians tough people or what. Must be genetic from the Viking days where you just slept on the bottom of the boat with icewater sloshing around your pillow.

 

The Polarlys made frequent stops along the way at small villages to pick up and drop off commuters. I woke up for these as the docking process in the coal black night was noisy. A cable wench was located right next to our cabin, which had to be operated. The next day/night we were still negotiating the inner coastal waterway, passing lots of dimly seen scenic rocks. We explored the ship, which took about 10 minutes, did not go out on the promenade in the cold and dark sleet, and sat around the bar area fortifying ourselves with some desert while waiting for dinner. This was to be the special cruise dinner welcoming the passengers with fine food and Champaign. At six, we made our way to the dining room. The drinks were passed out as we entered; Cheryl and I taking wine glasses full of sparkling cider, we don’t drink alcohol, and making our way to the stern windows where we had our reserved table for two.

Dinner was being served at the tables this night, as opposed to the cafeteria line. All was well until just as the food arrived, the ship left the protection of the fjords and sailed into the open ocean. The stern abruptly rose up 20 feet and sank 20 feet, and continued to do this. Clearly, I wasn’t going to be eating anything.   Quite the opposite. I had to get out of the restaurant quickly. I made my apologies to Cheryl as I turned green as the fabled Northern Lights, and headed for the cabin, lurching about and barely keeping my feet. Once safe on my bunk, I dug a scopolamine patch out of my billfold and stuck it behind my ear. Then I ate an entire bag of candy Cheryl had purchased back in Tromso. Sugar and the patch quelling the sea sickness, I lay there in a drug induced stupor while the ship danced around on the waves. Sometime later Cheryl came in. We may have talked, I don’t know.

In the middle of the night, a gale blew up, causing even more frantic gyrations with the little tin can boat. Have you seen videos of the destroyers escorting convoys across the North Atlantic in December during World War 2? The boats would crash through the gigantic waves, completely burying their bows in every wave, spume sweeping aft, but somehow surviving. That is precisely what we were doing. A sound like distant thunder rumbled through the walls.   The hull was flexing and popping. I was, as I mentioned, in a scopolamine induced stupor, so I kind of liked the, to my senses, gentle rocking and friendly background noises. Cheryl, however, was desperately clinging to her padded steel bunk, praying the ship wouldn’t capsize, trying to not get tossed out, and getting bruised in the process. She told me this the next day as I remembered none of it.

I skipped breakfast and lunch the next day while the ship made its’ way into calmer waters. In the afternoon we were going to dock for 3 hours at the town of Svolvor, Lofotan. It was an opportunity to get off the tin can for a while which everyone needed. This stop had an interesting feature, Magic Ice, an ice museum. We elected to go there as it was just down the wharf. The ice museum was a large deep freeze containing several interesting sculptures made entirely of ice, and an ice bar where your drinks are served in glasses made of ice. The temperature inside was 6 degrees, but this didn’t feel too bad since there was no wind chill. We could barely open the outside door against the gale force winds.   We wandered around snapping photos, but my camera phone unfortunately froze up. I had to keep sticking it in my pockets in order to take any shots.   We stopped at the bar made of ice to get a drink, diet coke, in the ice glasses, and sat on benches made entirely of ice in front of a table made entirely of ice, then we left to go outside and get really cold in the driving wind. Interesting experience. We wandered around the port a bit looking for more adventure, but this town apparently exists only to serve the North Sea oil platforms. Finding only a tank farm, we gave up and boarded the ship for the run down to Trondheim, our next stop.

 

LEAVING THE ARCTIC

 

On the way south we crossed the Arctic Circle at 66.5628 degrees North Latitude. This location is marked by a globe set on a rock island, and is noted this time of year by the sudden acquisition of murky light at noon. Taking photos of the globe, we came across a little ceremony on the top deck. Passengers were grouping around a ships hand getting fish shaped spoons of cod liver oil, which they drank.   It is some sort of Right of Passage for those hardy Norwegian folk that venture into the far north of the world.   We drank our spoons of cod liver oil, the taste of which immediately shot my memories back 60 years or so to an age when mothers, my mother included, fed cod liver oil to children in December to ward off colds. The taste was exactly the same, horrible. Cheryl never experienced this as a child, she being much younger than me, but seemed to enjoy it. I was able to take discernable photos of the forbidding mountains as we passed.   There appeared to be nothing living on these islands, until we came across a tiny village clinging to the shore on one. This village is accessible only by boat, and the inhabitants live solely off fishing the North Sea.   Perhaps they also keep a long boat or two for occasional raiding trips to the Outer Hebrides Islands, having passed up the changing times from 1200 to now. But then, I don’t know where they would find the trees to build a long boat, their island being mostly exposed granite.

That night we docked at Trondheim. I don’t know much about the western coast of Norway, but I do know about Trondheim. The German battleship the Bismarck spent the beginning of World War II hiding in the Trondheim fjord. You will recall the story of the Bismarck, named for Otto von Bismarck, as told in the movie ‘Sink the Bismarck’. The Bismarck was the largest battleship of WW2 in the European theater. It docked with the cruiser ‘Prinz Eugen’, from which I claim my middle name. Bismarck and Prinz Eugen eventually ventured forth into the North Atlantic on a merchant shipping raid and were intercepted by two British cruisers, the Prince of Wales and the Hood. Bismarck sunk the Hood in one salvo, and sent the Prince of Wales running. She was pursued by a huge British operation and eventually sunk by torpedo planes. The Bismarck’s career lasted a whole eight months.   Frightful waste of money.

We had booked a walking tour of Trondheim for the following morning. Morning came along with freezing rain, and off we went sliding about on ice covered sidewalks. I quickly noticed the natives had steel studs stuck in the soles of their shoes, and so had no problem with the omnipresent ice. I, on the other hand, wore my Wellington boots with leather soles and heels on this trip, which are somewhat slicker than ice skates. This was to be a very long walk through the uninspiring streets of Trondheim. But, off we went, wandering along the wharf and the fjord. I kept looking for some impressive government monument that would identify the berth of the Bismarck and tell her story, but I did not see a thing.   After a few blocks we veered off the wharf into town. At this point I slithered up to our pretty and young guide to ask about the Bismarck and where it had been anchored. To my complete amazement, she had no idea what I was talking about; not only no idea where it might have been anchored, but no idea what the Bismarck was. I explained to no avail. I know the Norwegians don’t particularly like the Germans, and are still really pissed off about WW2, but I can’t believe they have erased the Bismarck from their memories. Surely the movie had played here.

The rest of the walking tour was just dull now. There really wasn’t any reason to visit Trondheim other than to see the historic sight of the Bismarck anchorage. The town had nothing else to offer except for a couple of brass markers set in the sidewalk that mark where a Jewish family was taken by the Nazi’s. Our little guide did know all about the persecution of the Jews and the entire history of the family. I am not at all fascinated with this dark history and would rather not hear about it. Our tour guide was even getting bored or cold and was taking off faster and faster for the ship. She had those little studs in her shoes. By the time we got back, she was out of sight. Fortunately, it was easy to spot the ship, it being the only one in the harbor.

We got underway late that night heading for Bergen. Only one more night to see the fabled Northern Lights.   After dinner I made my way to the upper deck with my camera and laid flat on a deck chair looking up at the cloudbank. At least it wasn’t precipitating. No one else came up. I think the passengers were feeling a bit defeated by now. After a while, I saw a star through a hole in the clouds. I aimed my camera at it as it moved across the sky, and then the moon popped through the hole. I snapped a couple of shots before it vanished and waited as the hole moved northward, camera zeroed in. Was this going to be my chance?? No.   The hole drifted off and the solid cloud cover settled in. The shot of the moon was a good one, but it wasn’t the Northern Lights.

So, we arrived in Bergen defeated. The trip was interesting in its’ own way, but still a disappointment. Tired of walking around on ice covered sidewalks and not interested in paying really inflated prices for gifts, we decided to forego a stop in the Bergen shopping district and headed straight for the hotel next to the airport.   Early the next morning we were off to Prague, my favorite Eastern European city, for a few days of Christmas shopping. Magical Prague would, I knew, make up for the fruitless search for the Northern Lights. We always like to return at least once to places we visit around the world, but maybe we have seen enough of Norway above the Arctic Circle.

 

 

End

BIRD DOGS

 

 

My brother married Marilyn Francis in 1966. Marilyn’s father was the President of the Federal Reserve Bank in Saint Louis, a Catholic, and a wealthy man. The wedding was conducted in St. Louis, and the entire Obermiller clan attended. I even had a small part in the wedding (usher) and wore a tuxedo for the first, and last, time. After the rather extravagant wedding and reception, we all retired to the Francis estate for some family time. It was difficult, though, because Mr. Francis had recently purchased a couple of German shorthaired pointers – bird dogs – who were kenneled just outside the house. These were very noisy dogs, indeed, barking loudly and non-stop the entire time we were there. Later, when we had left for my aunts house in Warson Woods, Dad and I speculated that the noisy dogs were entirely unfit for such a stately and serene home, and Mrs. Francis. We figured Mr. Francis had picked up the very expensive dogs for social reasons. We knew he did not hunt birds or anything else. He was a banker after all. The dogs were named Duke and Howley. Mr. Francis let drop that they cost $600 each. An unheard of sum at the time.

 

A couple of months later Mr. Francis called Dad. Would he like to have the dogs as a ‘wedding’ gift? Apparently, Mrs. Francis had won an argument. Now, I was a long time hunter of everything, but I had never hunted birds – quail – with a dog. Sometimes, Dad hunted with me, but usually my companion was my friend Mickey Leach. Hunting dogs were something for the elite, Mick and I just tromped through the grass and brush kicking up quail at likely spots, shooting lots of rabbits. Mick and I had been hunting together for years, and we were very good at it. Times had changed, however.   Mick had graduated from high school a couple of years before me, gotten married, and gone off to Vietnam. I had some newer friends, but they were not hunters or outdoorsmen. When my brother got married, I was getting ready to go into the university, and my shotgun was left in the gun rack in favor of the academic world. The dogs changed all that. What followed was four years of companionship with my father, his friends, and the dogs.

 

Duke and Howley were, shall we say, somewhat frenetic dogs. Dad had owned an English pointer at some time in his youth, and looked forward to hunting with a birddog again. We built a nice kennel for them off the west side of our barn. We lived on 120 acres north of Columbia where we kept a few horses. The kennel was 300 feet from the house, far enough to mute the constant yodeling of the dogs. I wondered how one trained a bird dog as these guys had obviously not been trained and wouldn’t even hang around when you let them out for a run. Dad was quite sure that hunting and pointing was purely instinctive, and all we had to do was take them out to likely bird areas.   I was sure the dogs would just disappear, but the old man was right. The dogs seemed to know what shotguns were and what we were planning to do.   It was still summer and the quail season had not opened, but we were going to try to kick up some birds and shoot a couple so the dogs would know what to pay attention to. It was the beginning of an incredible adventure.

 

So, we let the dogs out and headed south into the valley. Howley promptly disappeared, but Duke hung around sniffing out the surroundings. Down in the valley, Howley’s tail could occasionally be seen wagging above the grass a quarter mile away, a foretaste of things to come. Duke continued to sniff. In a very short while, Duke broke into a point. Tail straight up, nose pointing at the ground. I was just amazed. Walking up on the dog, I flushed a quail from right under that nose, and promptly shot it. The 12-gauge going off over his head did not faze Duke. He watched the bird hit the ground, and with only a little encouragement found and picked it up. I expected him to run off with the bird, or eat it, but instead he trotted back to us and offered the bird to me.   I took it, still amazed. This dog had never been hunting, never seen a quail, never heard a shotgun. At this moment, Howley came streaking by. Smelling the dead bird, he put on the brakes, turned, and dashed up to me, and slobbered on the bird in my hand. Then he was gone again, but now he knew what he was looking for. The rest of that first day, we shot several birds.   Duke hung around and pointed within a hundred feet or so. Howley dashed around pointing birds several hundred feet away, eventually flushing them when we couldn’t get to him fast enough. But when the shotguns went off, he would come galloping back. Both dogs loved to find the birds we had downed, dutifully bringing them to us.   Quail hunting had reached a whole new level.

 

Now, I have to tell you a bit about my proficiency with my 12-gauge. My Uncle Fred gave me the gun when I turned 12 years old. It was a rickety old Irvin Johnson single shot 26 inch barrel with an improved, that is slightly choked, cylinder. It had no front sight and the hand grip had a tendency to fall off. I had hunted everything with this shotgun for 6 years, and we hunted all the time. I had so much practice with this old gun that I couldn’t miss…never missed.   Not ever.   So hunting quail with the dogs was destined to turn into simply harvesting birds. The shotgun accuracy tended to fall over into other guns I shot.   I was also completely accurate with my Dad’s Browning semi, a gun I had also used a lot. But I could pick up anyone’s shotgun and wreak havoc on the local bird population.

 

So we started the quail season in November hunting our land. The dogs were superb, but Howley would not hunt close and Duke would not hunt far. We busted   coveys and I would quickly get off my shot, generally trying for two birds at once. Dad was quite far sighted by this time, and would let the birds get some distance before firing. This was also desirable because the Browning was a duck gun with a long barrel and full choke. If you hit a bird up close you were likely to simply blow it up. But, Dad was a superb shot. He regularly got ‘trips’, three birds on a rise. They would fall far away. Howley would ferret out the distant shots, bringing back the birds one or two at a time. Duke would find my birds and bring them in. We typically did not go after singles after slaughtering half a covey on one rise.

 

One Saturday we had the dogs out hunting the east end of the valley.   There was frequently a covey found around the edge of a small wooded area, and we had worked around that edge, but with no results. We started west through the deep grass to see if the birds could be found out the in fields. Howley ranged in front and behind us, several hundred feet away. Abruptly, he went into a point. We were learning the pointing characteristics of the dogs, and this was not a ‘bird’ point. Howley’s tail was up and rotating in a large circle. This signal meant he was pointing some animal, but nothing we were interested in. If he pointed with his head level and his tail wagging from side to side, it indicated a loose covey. If he pointed down with his tail rigid, it meant a tight covey or single birds.   Dad shouted at the dog, and suddenly, he broke point and lunged at something in the grass, growling and biting.   Then, just as suddenly, he recoiled and started running toward us. We could see his white muzzle was completely gray, and when he got a little closer we could see, and smell, why. The stupid dog had jumped a skunk and gotten sprayed at point blank range right in the nose. Well, we had a little discussion about whether this would ruin his sense of smell, and were thankful we didn’t have to go home in the truck.

 

Howley hunted the rest of the day, pointing bird after bird with the awful reek of skunk following him like an ugly cloud. I don’t know how his ultra refined olfactory nerve could work after being coated with skunk oil, but it did. It didn’t impair him a bit, although it did impair us a bit.

 

So went the fall of my freshman year at the university. January was too cold and snowy to hunt, but we still took the dogs out to run during the spring and summer. Dad spread the reputation of our wonderful dogs, and the next fall we picked up several hunting partners. The regulars were Jim Butcher, an attorney and Presiding Commissioner for Boone County, Harry Winfrey, an accountant of some renown, and Mike Trombley, another attorney and a playboy. Sometimes Jim’s wife would join us, and sometimes Trombley would bring a girlfriend.   Butcher and Trombley were business partners, and my mother was a paralegal who managed their law firm.   Jim was a man of substance. He was wealthy and had his own Brittany pointer dog. He was a fair shot.   Trombley was also wealthy. He owned a share of a WW2 P-51 Mustang fighter plane and drove a white Jaguar XKE. Mike had fancy guns, but he couldn’t hit much and mostly came along to impress his girlfriend de jour. Harry was also wealthy, and was a very sincere hunter. He bought new and expensive shotguns regularly because he couldn’t hit a bird, and always blamed it on his guns. As I recall, poor Harry never once hit a bird. All three of these guys wore designer hunting clothes and boots, lots of red and buff, and really liked getting out in the colorful fall fields and woods. The women were similarly outfitted. All together, they looked like a bunch of un-horsed English foxhunters. They just needed a little trumpet to complete the effect.

 

Now, Dad was just as well off as the hunting partners, but he didn’t show it.   He wore an old scarred up canvas hunting coat that had game pockets and built in bandoleers for ammo. I wore an old green army jacket with lots of pockets, and had a knapsack for game. He had had his Browning since he was in the university and it showed. I have already described my ancient Johnson single shot. But neither clothes nor guns make the hunter. Dad and I were so much better than the others that it created a little bitterness. Jim took to making sarcastic comments about my shooting…and never missing.   He took to waiting and watching for me to miss, which never happened. When we started out into the fields, he would ask me how many birds I would shoot that day. I took to replying by fishing shells out of my pocket and holding them up to him.   It would be that many. I never took more than five or six shells, because it just wasn’t fair to the quail.

 

One day the partners all showed up to hunt, with women. I think there were extras with them as they were quite a large group. I really didn’t like to hunt with large groups. They had brought a couple of longhaired pointers, well brushed dogs that matched their well-dressed masters. Dogs that practically hung out between their legs, completely useless as hunters, but attractive nonetheless. The group tromped off eastward from the house across the apple orchard. Duke was doing his job out front, Howley was long gone. Five hundred feet east there was a small copse of woods with a little creek running through it. Duke promptly picked up birds on the north edge and the well dressed hunters lined up west to east facing the trees. The longhaired dogs went in to check Dukes point and a covey flushed, flying straight into the woods. Gunfire erupted from the hunters, probably 20 shots into the birds dodging the trees. I just stood behind the line waiting. No point wasting a shot into the trees. No birds fell in spite of the hail of shot. As the smoke and falling leaves cleared, Jim turned around to me with a triumphant leer on his face. ‘You missed!’ he shouted. I just smiled at him and opened my breach to show him the unfired round. ‘I didn’t see any point in shooting trees.’ I replied.

 

It was not going to be a good day. We went on down to the valley lined up like a bunch of pheasant hunters.   Mike had a silver flask of booze, probably expensive cognac that he occasionally passed around to fortify the hikers. The grass was deep and the going rough. The dogs were not finding birds.   With all the racket we were making, the birds were undoubtedly running on the ground ahead of the dogs, who couldn’t point a moving target. I was on the far south end of the line near the trees when something whacked me on the back. At the same time I heard the boom of a shotgun. One of those idiots, probably Trombley, had just shot me in the knapsack. It was bird shot at a distance and nothing reached the skin, but still… I was seriously pissed off and walked on back to the house. No more hunting with that circus.

 

On another hunt with just Jim, Harry and Dad, we were working long the ridge line south of the valley.   We had gotten into a covey and gotten a few birds. Jim was still waiting for me to miss and making occasional caustic comments.   Harry had become my firm admirer, however, and always watched me shoot when he could. Trying to figure out how I did it, I guess. While we looked for dead ones with the dogs, a single took off behind us at least 100 feet off. He was flying three or four feet off the ground and diving over the ridge.   I took a snap shot even though the bird was out of my range. I saw the bird twitch, but then it glided out of sight over the ridge. Jim started crowing. ‘You missed, you missed.’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘I cripped him.’ Jim kept it up. About that time Howley came galloping up. ‘Howley’, I shouted. ‘Dead bird,’ pointing at the ridge. Howley disappeared over the ridge and Jim did some more crowing when he didn’t return. We went on looking for downed birds, Duke busily picking them up and bringing them in while Jim kicked his dog trying to get him out from between his legs. I tossed Jim a bird I figured was his and he promptly popped its head off and fed it to the dog. Gross. What?   Was he rewarding the dog for hiding from the gunshots. About this time Howley reappeared galloping over the ridge toward us. The crippled bird in his mouth, still alive. ‘Well, Jim, I didn’t miss that one, either.’ Jim grabbed the bird and popped IT”S head off and gave it to his dog.   Double gross. I told him to keep it.   I didn’t want a headless bird in my knapsack.

 

After the second year of intensive birddog hunting, our 120 acres was getting seriously depleted of birds. I didn’t like it. This had always been my private hunting preserve. I kept it up and I didn’t do it so city slickers could have a place to hunt. Truth to tell, Jim lived on 400 acres south of town where he raised five star black angus cattle for gourmet restaurants as a gentlemen’s hobby. There were probably lots of birds there, but he never suggested we hunt it. Then, Uncle Don came to the rescue. Don Pickering, his wife Donna (my mothers beautiful sister – I had to admit she was beautiful even though she had to be 40 years old.) and their uncounted brood of kids lived in the woods near Mokane. Don and his boys were backwoodsmen. They fished the Missouri and Osage Rivers, and lived off deer and turkey. They never hunted quail, too effete for them, so they didn’t mind sharing some of their hunting grounds. One of these was Don’s deceased aunts farm called Elkhurst, where the regional airport is located today. This farm was gradually returning to a natural state, and was scarce of turkeys and deer due to Don and the boys. With a low population of turkeys, the quail population had bloomed.   The land was simply beautiful and you could hardly walk 10 feet without kicking up birds. We hunted there for two more years.

 

One day we were all out, two shorthaired dogs, two longhaired dogs, Jim, Harry, Dad and me. These days I was kind of pairing up with Harry. Harry was always full of admiration for my hunting prowess, and my success in engineering school. Not only did Harry really want to be a good hunter, he also was a frustrated engineer who had been forced to move into accounting. So, Harry and I were walking west along the south side of a tree row. Dad and Jim were on the north side. We had birds scattered in front and mostly running, but occasionally one would pop up of its own accord and promptly get shot. Harry was carrying a gorgeous new Browning side by side double barreled 12. He kept banging away, but of course, never hitting. Nearing the end of the tree row, he asked me very diffidently if he could perhaps try a shot with my ratty old gun. Perhaps the magic was in my gun. We traded.   In short order a bird popped up and Harry took the shot – and missed. I dropped it with his Browning. Drooping with disappointment, he handed back my gun, careful to keep the grip from falling off. Howley brought us the bird, which I slipped into Harry’s game pocket. I had taken to giving him all my birds so he wouldn’t go home empty handed, and could perhaps justify the numerous gun purchases to his wife.

 

Dad and Jim had herded a number of birds ahead of them on the north side of the tree row. At the west end, a large grassy field stretched out, and the birds had made for the field, scattered all over. As Harry and I reached the end of the trees on our side, a single bird went winging across from left to right high up and heading for the field. I took a quick shot and saw it twitch but it kept going up high, but now veering west away from us. I got Howley’s attention and pointed at the bird. ‘Dead bird’, I said, and off he went trailing the bird by sight. Then I heard the familiar crowing from just around the corner. ‘You missed him.   That dog is never going to run that bird down.’ I ignored Jim, and the four of us started working the big field. All the dogs except Howley, who hadn’t returned, were getting points, and the quail population was quickly diminishing. Duke picked up a point 50 feet from me, Jim’s dog backed him, and I started toward them. About that time Howley came galloping into sight, head up high, and coming right to me. Jim yelled at me to keep the damned dog away before he flushed the point.   Howley was almost on the action when he locked up and slid to a stop. He had my bird in his mouth, having found it and brought it back. He carefully set the bird down and froze into a high point. More birds.   I walked over and flushed a pair, dropping them both with one shot. Jim had nothing more to say. Howley had found birds while running full tilt and pointed them, all while carrying a dead bird in his mouth. Incredible.   To make matters worse, I dropped them both with one shot from my rickety old shotgun. Harry applauded.

 

That was it for the day. It was late, Jim couldn’t take any more. When we got in the truck, I invited Howley to curl up on my lap.   The dog was beat, having run 30 miles or so that day. The tip of his tail was red and raw for the last inch, all the hair beaten off.   Howley gave me an adoring and satisfied doggy look, and went to sleep. This was what the dog lived for. I, however, had to live for other things.

 

Endings are hard to predict. That was the last hunt for the year. The weather turned and the season ran out. It was also my last hunt with the dogs, ever. I was admitted to graduate school in January, a singular distinction for a senior engineering student who had not actually graduated yet. As a graduate student, I received a government stipend, which was sufficient to pay my way without working a part time job. I moved out of the Obermiller estate and into a house trailer. The following fall I could never find the time to go hunting, the demands of school simply too great. The summer after that I took a job in Florida, got married, and started on another path. In the decades since, I have only gone quail hunting once, and missed an easy shot with my pretty Fox double barrel. My sons don’t care to hunt. I don’t have a dog.

 

I miss those fall days while I studied engineering and hunted with Dad, and Jim and Harry.   And, Duke and Howley. They are all gone now.

Altruism Lost

 

 

Sometimes an opportunity presents itself that requires your immediate action – and if you don’t move, you will regret it for rest of your life. I was standing around in Wal-Mart the other night watching people checkout while waiting for Cheryl, and I found myself going over and over an event from 35 years ago.

 

In 1974 Gail, my first wife, and I were very poor. We lived in a tiny house trailer in the country in Miami County, Kansas, and were saving money, and garnering the will power, to undertake building our own house. We didn’t have much and didn’t want to spend anything, so we frequented farm auctions in the neighborhood for stuff we needed, and for the ambiance of a sale. These auctions were held to dispose of a lifetime of accumulated property.

 

A variety of farm folk and the occasional city folk could be found at farm auctions. The farm folk all knew each other and shied away from the strange city folk. We were new to the neighborhood and didn’t know anyone, and obviously weren’t quite farm folk or city folk and so were ignored by all. These auctions first sold all the small, basically worthless, stuff which would be laid out on long tables. Machinery, furniture and appliances were sold later, and then sometimes the farm itself. The auctioneer was working through one table while I watched, not interested in anything there.

 

The farmer, who was no longer with us, must have been quite a fisherman at one time. At one place on the table there was a bundle of fishing rods – casting rods, spinning rods, bait rods – all with reels, all pretty old but perhaps functional still.   They were piled up right in front of me at the end of the table. Next to me was a boy, perhaps 12 years old, who was eying those rods. Next to him was a man, probably his dad. The boy was having an urgent conversation with his dad, obviously about maybe bidding on those rods. After some moments of one-sided conversation, his dad nodded.   The boy sidled up to the table.

 

The auctioneer worked his way down the table until he reached the rods. He held a couple up and asked, “What am I bid for these fishing rods?” His face shining with anticipation, the boy bid a dollar. Then a two dollar bid came, this from a grown man facing me from across the table. This man was small in stature and other ways. He was older, maybe 45, with short graying hair, bristly face, and squinty eyes. He aimed his squinty eyes at the boy and a small sneer appeared. He was looking for a fight and intended to win. The boy bid three dollars. Squinty bid four. Maybe he could only win fights with boys. The boy bid five, looking at his dad. Squinty bid six. The boy looked at his dad again.   Clearly a pre-set limit had been reached. Dad gave a slight shake of his head. The boy was not to get the old fishing rods.

 

I opened my mouth, preparing to bid over squinty with the vague thought that I would buy the rods and give them to the boy. It wasn’t fair or manly for squinty to out bid the boy.   It was cheap and mean. But, I had to think about it for a few seconds. What if I offended the dad? What was I thinking about spending money I did not have?

 

A few seconds delay was all it took to close the bidding.   It had only been the boy and the man, no reason to prolong things hoping for another bidder to step in. My opportunity was gone. The boy, crestfallen, turned away.

 

Later I complained to Gail about my inaction. But, she hadn’t seen the affair and didn’t care much about a boy buying some fishing rods. I did, and I do. This incident has stuck in my memory like permanent glue. I can still see the whole thing, I can still hear it, and I regret my inaction to this day.   For all I know, this evil deed has stuck with the boy, too. If I knew who he was and where I could find him, I would apologize for not acting on my prompting, for it was a prompting. The good angel sitting on my shoulder urged me to act and I failed.

 

Was this a test? Engineers are cursed with an inability to act quickly. Quick decisions are dangerous. Mistakes can be made. People can be hurt. I have tried to do better over the intervening years. Sometimes, I visualize situations in advance so I am prepared to act quickly should it be necessary. Sometimes I have acted quickly, but more often, not. Usually, I have to think it through, do the analysis.

 

So, I still have to replay the event, to remind myself of my regret, to remind myself that sometimes one has to act instantly for the good of others, to pay attention to those urgent promptings. To remind myself that I am still sorry I did not buy a bunch of old fishing rods for a kid.

 

April 12, 2009

 

Cheryl insists I post this story.  She really likes it.

FIREPLACES

 

 

Sitting in the front parlor on a cold December day, the gas burner hissing in the fireplace; warmth radiates into the room. Time is a malleable thing. I am also sitting in the back parlor in my grandparents home 57 years ago, the gas burner hissing in the fireplace. It is Christmas Eve, and I am waiting for my cousins to arrive.   My sister waits with me, as we stay warm in front of the glowing ceramic panel. In a while, the old house will fill with happy children and harried parents, today, and yesterday. In this time, we open gifts tomorrow. In the other time, we open gifts tonight. Tomorrow, 25 will fill our old house and eat dinner and celebrate with the grandparents looking benignly on. In the other time, 25 ate dinner and celebrated with the grandparents looking benignly on. I am the grandfather, I was the grandchild. So much time has passed, but time is a malleable thing, and no time has passed. All is fresh in my mind as though yesterday is today. Gas hisses through the tubes, bursts into blue flame, gives off its ephemeral warmth, and is gone, but memory is eternal. The time is December 24, 1956, or is it December 24, 2013. It is, I know, Christmas Eve.

 

………..

 

My family always celebrates Christmas at my grandparent’s house in Jefferson City. Mom and Dad load up the Studebaker with four kids and a trunk full of presents in Columbia, and off we go, driving 30 miles south to Jeff City. These grandparents are my mother’s. We call them Momma Fritz and Daddy Roy. My father’s parents, Mama and Papa, live in Saint Louis, and we never go there for Christmas, but always a week later.

 

Jefferson City is the gathering place for all the Cox family children and grandchildren, and there are many, arriving at different times during the day. Uncle Bill and Aunt Marge and their numerous brood live in Jefferson City, so they show up late for dinner and gift opening. Aunt Betty and Uncle Bill Chapman live in Kansas City, which is a long days drive in 1956, and they also get there late with their two boys. Aunt Donna and Uncle Don, also with a numerous brood, come down from Fulton, not so far, and they get there early. I can’t give numbers for the grandchildren, because there were more added every year, so I guess.   My mother was the oldest Cox child, and we were on the average older than our cousins.

 

When we arrived at the huge old house on Vineyard Square, I dash to the door, push it open, and shout ‘Christmas Eve Gift’. My mother always told me to do it, and perhaps I thought it meant we would open gifts on Christmas Eve, which we always did, never waiting till Christmas Day. Gifts piled up around the Christmas Tree impressively as the other families arrived.   The grandparents didn’t go for big trees with lavish decorations like we did at our house, and as I do today.   Their trees were always sparse and something of a disappointment to my eyes. I guess it was a generational thing. They came out of the Great Depression, and lavish trees were probably frowned upon. But the gift pile made up for it.

 

A stand up lunch would appear in the kitchen early in the afternoon. You could sit in the little breakfast nook and snack, but you could not take anything out of the kitchen. It made for some togetherness as people crowded in.   Eggnog and whiskey was available on the south counter along with small glasses. I discovered early on that I liked the taste of eggnog and whiskey, and I would help myself. No one ever objected, but then, this was a different age. The cousins did the same, and soon we would become rather sleepy and quiet. Perhaps that was the secret goal of the adults. It worked.

 

The afternoon progressed, and Momma Fritz and the daughters prepared the huge and sumptuous Christmas dinner. Turkey and ham, greenbeans, potatoes, and all the rest. They would do it all again tomorrow, but that would be various leftovers and not quite the same. About seven, dinner would be served. The dining room was reserved for the adults, and the children were set up in the back parlor with folding tables lined up to the several day beds that lined the walls.

 

Dinner went on for a long time, but eventually all were finished. The women retired to the kitchen to take care of dishes while the men retired to the front parlor to relax and smoke.   All men smoked in that day, none did dishes. My grandfather smoked cigars.   My dad smoked Camels unfiltered.   My uncles all smoked. No one minded a bit. We children retired to the back parlor to rest for the big event.

 

I had a privilege that was solely mine. I was in charge of lighting the gas fire in the fireplace. I am not sure when that privilege was granted, but no one touched the wooden matches left on the mantel but me. My older sister sat on the hearth on the left side; I took the right where the gas valve was located. Striking a match, I held it to the burner and turned the valve.   A blue flame spread across the bottom of the ceramic heat plate. Gas hissed, and the ceramic slowly turned cherry red. We sat in the warmth of the gas fire, Nancy on one side and me on the other. My brother and other sister and cousins came in to sit on the day beds and watched out the east windows for the arrival of Santa Claus.

 

We waited an eternity for the sound of reindeer hooves and the jolly ‘Ho, Ho, Ho’ that signified his arrival and departure. My brother, the oldest of all, always managed to see Santa and the sleigh arriving, and would shout to us, ‘There he is, there he is. See! Right there on the roof.’ Then, sure enough, all would hear the patter of hooves, and in a few minutes a distant ‘Ho, Ho, Ho’. Various children would shout ‘I see him, I see him’. Then, an adult would come in to tell us Santa had come and gone and we could come out now.

 

We ran to the front parlor where the gift pile had magically grown to even larger proportions, and took our places with our parents. The places were set by some tradition. My Aunt Betty and her family were to my right across the archway to the dining room.   Uncle Bill and his brood were directly across the room under the front windows. Aunt Donna and her brood were to Uncle Bill’s right. Momma Fritz and Daddy Roy took the couch by the front door, except Daddy Roy always stood over the furnace register in the corner by the stairs, where he could see everything and keep warm. My younger aunts distributed gifts around the room but nothing was opened.

 

With all the gifts handed out, we began opening, one gift at a time, youngest to oldest. This wasn’t too bad when there weren’t too many of us, but in later years it became far too time consuming. Eventually, the rule was set that when anyone ran out of gifts, everyone could open. My mother collected all the bows and tissue paper. I don’t know why.

 

About midnight, children started dropping from exhaustion. Uncle Bill and Aunt Marge loaded up gifts and children and headed home. The rest of us retired to the cold sun porch on the second floor that was full of big beds with feather mattresses and comforters. We would all pick our spot, get carefully positioned, and drop onto the feather mattresses, sinking like stones into the softness. The mattresses folded up around us until blankets were hardly necessary, and we drifted off to sleep as happy as only children on Christmas can be.

 

Christmas morning was always glorious with presents waiting to be played with and a sumptuous breakfast of bacon and eggs and toast and sausage and hot chocolate to be eaten. We played until early afternoon when we ate up the leftovers from the dinner the night before. Gradually, the families left.   Aunt Betty first because they had so far to drive, then the rest. On the way back north, I would sleep on the rear ledge of the Studie, waking up as we pulled into our drive and home.

 

…..

 

Many, many, years have passed. Momma Fritz and Daddy Roy became old and left us, and Christmas in Jefferson City was forgotten. Christmas at the Obermiller home in Columbia never turned into a family event. After a few years, my brother and sisters were scattered too far apart to make a pilgrimage home. Family Christmas at the grandparents was lost for a generation, and I think that is generally the way it is.

 

But family traditions never really die. They may sleep for a while, but then wake up when circumstances permit and the time is right again. So tomorrow, all my children will come to Opa and Oma’s big old house. Some will get here on time for our traditional breakfast. All will get here on time to open presents. Our gift pile is huge and fills our entire entry hall, spilling up the stairs and out into the front parlor. Around noon, each family takes their traditional place in the front parlor, and aunts/children distribute gifts. Then we open, youngest to oldest, one at a time. Oma collects all the bows and tissue paper. After a while we will tire of gift opening and gather in the dining room and back parlor for Christmas dinner, prepared by Oma and daughters. After dinner, we will reassemble in the front parlor to finish gift opening. Soon after that, children will scatter to other family’s festivities, and Oma and Opa will go to a movie.

 

Christmas at Oma and Opa’s will continue for a few more years until we, too, have left this world. Then, I suppose, the gathering will divide again among my eight children, only to reappear in another generation in another home. It is just possible the gas will still be hissing in another fireplace. I will listen for it.

 

 

END