FRONT-PORCH GOSPEL: This life story begins in 1973 (kind of) part 77

“I don’t think we ever had a bad Christmas,” she said after a moment, “not in all of our years. The Lord gave us that. It seemed that the little things were our kids’ favorites. We’d find a box of Life Savers, and the kids would rattle them around in their mouth for a month. They loved little things like the slinkies that everybody bought, and then we would give each of them one big gift – for the boys, a BB gun, maybe, for Buella Mae, a diamond bracelet or necklace.”

I smiled at all the memories, and added, hoping not to interfere too much, “Mama, I don’t know what year it was, but I must’ve been no more than eight the year you and Daddy bought me that bicycle with the streamers comin’ out of the handles – it was a silver bike, I’ll never forget. And it snowed that winter, like it did this past winter – Oh, I remember you always bought us some gloves and a toboggan because it gets cold here in Georgia in the wintertime. And I rode that bike all over LaGrange – down to Uncle River and Aunt Gracie’s, to Grandma’s, and she’d have some of that hot apple cider to warm me up. Then I’d be off again, but pretty soon I’d be freezin’ again and have to come home. You’d be in the kitchen cookin’, but you always had a big boiler of hot chocolate, and that’d warm me up.

“Ya’ll always got me a basketball, for obvious reasons,” I said, glancing at Corrina. She smiled. She knew my first love. “After ridin’ all over town, I remember grabbin’ my new basketball and goin’ out to shoot baskets, playin’ a dozen games of one-on-none either down at the Whatleys or when we got a goal there in the back yard,” I said, pointing to where the goal, still bent, stands up a little hill above the gravel drive, out by the small white green-roofed barn.

“I never thought about it ‘til now,” I went on, “but I now see why I fought the dickens out of not believin’ in Santa Claus. I was almost 12 before I finally gave in to it. But, even now, I think I still believe in him. I think I’ll always believe in Santa.” Then I turned to Mama, “We’re goin’ to have a good one this year, too, aren’t we?”

Mama’s response was an unconvincing wry smile, and she reached over and took me by the hand. Corrina watched on.

“Tell me, Billy Ray, tell me what you loved the most about Christmas,” she asked, and I could tell her voice was getting tired and she was glad I took over a little of the storytelling.

“Ah, Mama,” I said, “everything. Can you believe,” I said, laughing, “can you believe your second son tried to tell me there was no Santa Claus. It was about a week before Christmas, I think I was ten that year. Daddy was still home, and I think it was the best Christmas yet. I was telling him how much I was lookin’ forward to Christmas, and that I jus’ knew he was goin’ to bring me another new bicycle, and a basketball, too. Pistol laughed at me and started losin’ his mind and tellin’ me that there jus’ isn’t a Santa Claus and that I might as well learn it now as later.

“But Pistol never learned. He tried the same thing with the birds and the bees, Mama, when I was goin’ into the seventh grade, and that one went over like a ton of those brick sittin’ out front of Corrina’s new house right now. But he insisted on the Santa Claus thing, too, but, you know, Santa came jus’ as he always had – brought me that silver bicycle I was talkin’ about, with the long handlebars and blue and red streamers. I’m sure it’s Santa’s best seller every year, and I spent the ‘live-long day’ roarin’ down every hill in town like a fire engine out of control.

“But the best part, Mama – and Corrina Belle – was Christmas evenin’, when, Mama, you’d always gather us around. Whatever troubles we may have had before, they were all gone. We’d sit around and drink hot chocolate with marshmallows. I’d get a little on my upper lip, so Pistol and Squatlow would start teasin’ me to no end. Daddy would start to get onto both of them, but you would step in and say, ‘Let’s listen to some Christmas music’ – You always knew how to calm things down. You’d go over to the stereo there,” I said, pointing to the old record player we had had for years that sat against the east wall not far from the tree. “And you’d pull out the Bing Crosby record, and we’d listen to ‘White Christmas,’ and ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas,’ and jus’ love bein’ together.”

“I think ‘I’ll be home for Christmas’ is my favorite, Mama said, “all I ever wanted was to have my family home.”

I smiled. I knew she was talking about Daddy.

“What I didn’t know then,” I told Cheyenne as we got there, “that I know now some fifty years since we sat together that night in our cozy living room, is that I would always go home for Christmas every year since. I’d always go back to this little whitewashed house at 901 Juniper with our little family and enjoy the same things we did then, one way or another. I still do.

“My favorite songs – Mama, you already know, don’t you – I said with a Christmas smile, “are ‘Silver Bells’ and ‘Away in a Manger.’ Those songs almost always give me a li’l allergy attack.”

I smiled again, and waited for Mama’s response. When it came, it surprised me. She looked off into the distance and begun to sing softly, “Away in a manger.”

Right there, in the middle of July, Mama and me, and Corrina Belle – the most unlikely trio you would ever expect – sang the night away. First, it was “Away in a Manger,’ then it was ‘Silver Bells.’

Ah, I think it was Christmas time in the city that night.

Next, it was ‘Silent Night,’ and I think our special July night became about as calm and about as bright as it was that Christmas night long ago.

Mama held up her hand for us to stop after “Silent Night,” and said, “Li’l Corrina, what is your favorite, you never told us.”

Corrina smiled, then scrunched her forehead as she thought hard for a moment. Finally it came to her: “I like ‘Downtown,’” she said, “I guess that’s a Christmas song, right? My mama and I always go shopping downtown Roanoke for Christmas, or we’ll go down to Carrolton or Columbus, somewhere just about every weekend, and I always loved hearing that song when it would play in the stores.”

And even before she could finish, I jumped in singing “Downtown, lowly,” almost as if I was singing just to myself. The only thing, I only knew one word. So, since Mama and I didn’t know the words too well, Corrina would sing and ask one of the questions of the song. 

“Where do you go when you have worries?” And we’d sing,

“Downtown.”

“And where do you go when you’re alone,” Corrina would sing, and the answer was the same, an enthusiastic and fun, “Downtown.”

And, for once that summer, in that most magical moment, there were no worries, no hurry, no noise, as the song says, not on that night.

After a while, the two of us helped Mama back to bed, her eyes heavy by then, and she managed a smile when I told her “Thanks for the night, Mama.”

Corrina tucked her in, and the night was complete.

Back in the car, I reached over and took Corrina by the hand.

“I don’t care what my big brother says, I’m glad we still believe in Santa Claus, Corrina Belle.”

“Yes,” she said, “me, too. He’s real even in July.”

“Realer than ever,” I said, and we laughed at the new word.

Ah, it was true. Mama was happy, Corrina was sitting close to me in the red Nova, I didn’t have Red or Doocy or any of the others of the crew hollering at me, and Santa’s sled could almost be seen scorching the night sky with joy already.

We needed all that for Christmas in July, 1973.

Coach Steven Ray Bowen served as a teacher and basketball coach at Red Oak High from 1998-2012 and recently spent two years teaching and coaching at Ferris. He and his wife Marilyn (the “amazin’ blonde”) served many years with the Church of Christ of Red Oak at Uhl/Ovilla Roads, but now spend time evangelizing in several states in addition to Coach’s work as a writer and author, including the writing of the ongoing novel/memoir here in the Press. Call or text (972) 824-5197, or email coachbowen1984@gmail.com, or see frontporchgospel.com.