My First Adirondack Christmas- 1957

My First Adirondack Christmas

The absolute belief in the existence of Santa Claus used to be one of those magic and irretrievable things about being a child. Nowadays, Santa Claus is usually considered a hackneyed anachronism whose existence is not often fostered by parents. Even when it is, a jaded peer or older sibling will usually squelch it at an early age in a moment of pique or cynicism.

In the 1950s, when we Baby Boomers were kids, things were different. Most parents wove elaborate webs of benevolent deceit in order to preserve that wide-eyed naïveté in their children for as long as possible. I remember my own parents leaving a few Christmas presents by the back door, claiming “Oh look! Santa must have dropped these on his way out the door!” My own cousin Wesley Garrett kept the faith throughout most of his first decade, willing to fight anyone who challenged his unswerving belief. Since he was of above average intelligence, I can only conclude that the strength of his conviction related to the efforts of his parents to preserve it. His father, my uncle Dick Garrett, who maintained his inner child throughout his life, always took impish delight in leading us down the garden path to the point where we really believed that the North Pole was in Keene, New York on Whiteface Mountain.

Before 1957 my family had spent Christmases at our home twenty miles west of Philadelphia, where the notion of Santa coming down the chimney was already being swept aside by the relentless tides of progress. The weather didn’t help either- all too often December 25 was a greenish-gray washout. But when we would make our traditional Christmas phone call to my Aunt Peggy and Uncle Dick Garrett as they spent the holiday at my grandparents’ house on Coolidge Avenue in Glens Falls, it was invariably white with fresh snow. We did visit Bompa and Nanny Garrett often during the summer, since they owned a rustic lake house nearby at Pilot Knob on Lake George, but never in winter.  How I longed to spend one Christmas up north in that century-old house with all its familiar antique charm, situated in what seemed a storybook city almost at the doorstep of North Pole!

So I was thrilled in 1957, when I was about six and still skeptically clinging to the concept of Santa as a living, yet immortal being, my parents announced that we would be spending Christmas in Glens Falls at my grandparents’ house! Nanny and Bompa, Aunt Peggy, Uncle Dick, cousin Rick, brother Dave, sister Kathy, and my parents would all be together, and there was already some snow on the ground!

 My rascally Uncle Dick Garrett

The youthful anticipation I felt on the six-hour Christmas Eve drive north was exquisite. By the time we reached Albany, the drab grays and browns of the landscape had turned to white, and as we took Route 9 through Saratoga (before the Northway even existed) a quiet but steady snow began to fall. When our 1957 Pontiac Safari pulled up in front of my grandparents’ house just in time for dinner, the snow already lay piled on the porch railings, while the Christmas tree lights winked at us through the living room window.

 My senses were on full alert as we entered the house. There was the quaint scent of my grandmother’s perfume which seemed to mark her as being born in the last century (which she was), and the feel of her powdered cheek on mine as she greeted me with a hug. My grandfather smelled of clove gum and a trace of Bourbon, as he shook my small hand with his bony grasp. There was the creak of the old floorboards and the slow muted “tick-tock” of the banjo clock hanging in the foyer. The dining room air was rich with the aroma of juicy roast beef cooked medium rare, and homemade mincemeat and pumpkin pies. The freshly-cut balsam tree, festooned with vintage ornaments and aluminum tinsel filled the living room with a clean, woodsy fragrance as the Nutcracker Suite played on the hi-fi.

During dinner, as the adults ate in the dining room, my siblings, cousins and I got to eat in the kitchen, where we were able to exchange the latest phrases, expletives, and imitation body sounds without fear of parental censure. After a sumptuous meal, my father, uncle, and grandfather occupied one end of the living room smoking their Briarwood pipes, while my mother caught up on all the hometown gossip with my aunt and grandmother the other end.

 
  Frances and Walter Garrett, Don and Mary Way

After dinner, as the snow continued to fall in the darkness outside, we kids would explore the old house, just to make sure nothing had changed. It hadn’t. In the basement lurked the huge, sinister coal furnace with its hollow metal arms reaching upward to the upstairs floor registers like some gigantic upside-down octopus. In the living room there were the family portraits and photographs on the mantle, the Philco TV in its mahogany cabinet by the picture window, and dominating the back wall, a huge full-length portrait of my grandmother in her youth painted by her art teacher. The dining room was occupied by the seemingly ageless and faded goldfish in his small bowl on the sideboard. In the kitchen were the long- obsolete appliances, worn linoleum floor and the wall-mounted bottle opener that look like a set of false teeth (Bompa and Uncle Dick were dentists).

The attic, however, was where the real fun was. To get there you had to go to the landing on the second floor, across from the bathroom with its pedestal sink and black-and-white tiled floor that resembled a giant checkerboard. Opening the squeaky attic door, we were greeted by a gust of cold air down the steep unpainted stairway, where dozens of dusty issues of Readers Digest and TV Guide were stacked on either side. Climbing the steps, we felt an energizing chill from the unheated attic air. We smiled as we recognized that special musty odor generated by decades of accumulated dust and the many wonderful relics that made the smell unique to this particular attic. I felt we could spend a happy lifetime playing with all the stuff up there. My great-grandfather’s Civil War uniform and accoutrements, my grandfather’s old glass-plate- negative view camera, foot-driven dental drills and rusty old rifles, and my uncles high school boxing gloves all begged for attention. My sister reveled in adorning herself and her grandmother’s old dresses, wigs and shoes.

At one end of the attic was the best thing of all- an unused maid’s bedroom, the dingy neglected likes of which made it suitable only for visiting grandchildren to play and sleep in. Despite its faded wallpaper and cracked plaster, its remoteness from the rest of the house made it the perfect hideaway, far beyond the world of grown-ups. My brother Dave and I shared an old wrought iron double bed tucked under the eaves on one side of the room, while sister Kathy occupied a cot across the room. A single, floor level window gave us a view of the holiday scene far below, with Christmas carolers making the rounds, snowflakes silently settling on front door wreaths, and the old-fashioned glass Christmas lights casting their greens, reds, blues, and yellows on the deepening powder.

Bompa’s Christmas lullaby

 Finally, after returning to the living room to watch Bell Telephone Company’s marionette production of Clement Moore’s “The Night Before Christmas” on the Philco, followed by Bompa’s rendition of “Silent Night” on his violin, we were too tired to fight off sleep any longer. Bidding a Merry Christmas to my aunt, uncle, cousins, and grandparents, my siblings and I once again ascended the creaky stairs toward our drafty little aerie to be tucked under several layers of sheets, blankets by our mother and father.

As their footsteps receded down the stairs, Kathy, David and I began reviewing our wish lists for Santa. Kathy expected a set of oil paints, while Dave wanted a Daisy air rifle. I hope for a View-master, Mouseketeer ears, and anything related to dinosaurs. Soon, the sounds of slow deep breathing told me that I was the only one still awake. As I snuggled contentedly under three layers of bed clothes, I could feel the Sandman beginning to overtake me as well.

That’s when it happened… I became dreamily aware of the jingle of sleigh bells-very distant at first, then louder until they seem to be almost outside the window. In an instant I was wide awake and quite curious. Then to my amazement, a deep baritone voice bellowed out of the winter darkness a jolly “Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas!”

Now I was transfixed. My eyes were as big as snowballs and I was afraid to move a muscle. After all, “He knows when you’re awake….” A harsh scraping sound coming from almost directly over my head was followed by a rhythmic thump-thump-thump that seemed to make its way across the roof, perhaps toward the chimney on the other side house! By then I could contain my excitement no longer. Leaping over my still-somnolent brother and almost landing in the not-quite empty chamber pot in the middle of the room, I dashed to the window to try and catch a glimpse of something. But there was only the relentless silent snowfall. After hearing nothing more, I finally crawled back to bed, and I remember wondering only why I had never actually “witnessed” Santa’s arrival before?

The next morning, before opening our presents, I shared my excitement over the preceding nights happening with my family. My uncle and his family had returned to their home in Hudson Falls late the night before, but my parents and grandparents reacted with the sort of “so what” complacency that only reinforced my faith even more.

It wasn’t until years later that I realized their reaction could have meant something else. Although I no longer remembered what I received from “Santa” that special Christmas, I remembered his alleged appearance on Bompa’s roof in 1956. Over the intervening years my siblings, cousins and I had been treated to many ingenious and elaborate pranks by my uncle Dick. Sometime after my wife Harriet and I moved to Glens Falls (where we remain to this day, living three houses down from my grandparents’ house), I recalled the special magic of that Christmas Eve with Uncle Dick over another Christmas dinner. I told him that after a while I figured out it was he who shook the bells and bellowed “Merry Christmas”, and I deduced that he must have somehow dislodged a large sheet of snow off the roof to sound like a sleigh landing. Even then he was reluctant to divulge the truth, but in his eyes, I could see the mirthful recognition of his modus operandi. But I was still puzzled about something.

“How did you make the sound of footsteps coming across the roof to the chimney, Uncle Dick?”

His eyes changed to a puzzled stare. “What footsteps? I didn’t make any footsteps!”

Could it be…..?

 

Uncle Dick with my mother Polly, Nanny and Bompa seeing us off on Coolidge Avenue after our 1957 Christmas visit. Sister Kathy is in the car