Christmas 1956

In sorting the many hundreds of photos for the albums, I found a few pictures of Christmas Day 1956. In one of the photos I can see our raggedy Christmas tree (I think Dad went out back into the woods and cut it down), Raggedy it was, with wide spaces between the branches , not too many Christmas decorations because it didn't have that many branches. There was David, still in diapers with a head full of soft little curls. Gene growing very handsome at 14, Bob, sturdy and sweet faced at 12, Vic, with a solemn almost sad little face one minute and the next lit up with an impish smile at 4-1/2. I'm there of course. Just turned 17. I'm sitting on the floor holding out a little white dog with dark ears and a short tail. David has his little hands around its neck as he gives it a big thorough kiss! There are toys of course, a baseball bat, large and small footballs, a basketball, a plush elephant, what looks like a small plastic pull toy dog, some shirts and boxed games, and a small metal bulldozer. There aren't many store bought toys and as cute as they might have been, they are not the toys that made this such a special Christmas. 1956 wasn't a good year for Mom and Dad and they were worried. Money was short, Dad's building business wasn't doing well. When Dad started his business the economy was better than good, and it wasn't unreasonable to expect his business to grow and with it the promise of a better life. I remember how excited and enthusiastic they both were as the very small ranchers Dad was building began to sell. Unfortunately, somewhere around mid 1956, a downturn in the economy that was to prove sharp but short and last into 57 and 58 made it impossible for Dad's fledgling business to survive. The effects on Dad's business were felt long before that Christmas Day. There simply wasn't much money to spend on Christmas presents or anything else for that matter. I don't know whether my brothers knew something was wrong, but I did. I just didn't know what. Dad would come home at night and then disappear and we wouldn't see him again until supper time the following evening. This went on for weeks and weeks. When I asked Mom where Dad was, she refused to tell me. I remember wondering if they were having trouble with each other and it was just too scary to think about. The answer to my disappearing Dad is in one small black and white photo. In it are two cranes, two trucks, a bulldozer and a wooden rocking horse with a hand painted face and a yarn tail. Each night, Dad went into his shop and carefully cut, carved, sanded and painted those two cranes, two dump trucks, a bulldozer and a wooden rocking horse with a hand painted face and a yarn tail. The bulldozer, trucks and cranes are long gone. But the rocking horse was ridden by his grandchildren and great grandchildren. Despite their worries and difficult circumstances, once again Mom and Dad did everything they could to make sure that we had Christmas that year. And it was a good Christmas, maybe one of the best we ever had. Mom made her famous mile high chocolate cake and we had good food to eat. Forty years later my Dad made wooden toys again. This time he would take them to flea markets to sell. When he died in November 2005, there were still a few sitting on the table in the patio. Brandon Blanchard has one, Rob Klein, Jr. has another. I have a comical elephant puzzle Dad made and gave me as a gift. I'm not sure who else has a wooden toy and I think Brother Bob Klein has the rocking horse. (Bob tells me that years ago he took the rocking horse home. By that time it was in bad shape and he restored it. His children Lisa, Robby and Michelle all rode that little horse. Later, Bob made copies of that horse for his grandchildren and gave the original rocking horse with a yarn tail to David, the child now grown up with children of his own.)