YES, I AM STILL HERE peeking out my window on Main Street, and I am so full of the Christmas spirit that I’ve loosened up and started giving warning tickets to J-Turn offenders.
First of all, there are so many Christmas community coffees that no one should go hungry. Thanks to the businesses that keep up with our town’s tradition.
Second, thanks to Howard Memorial Hospital for caring for our community’s health by conducting last week’s health fair. Yes, I know I need to lose some weight, but there’s no way I can avoid all of those community coffees. Somebody’s got to take their picture.
Third, I can now die a happy man because I got to pull the rope and ring the tower bell at the E.A. Williams Chapel Museum. Historical Society president Freddie Horne offered me the chance during their Christmas Open House, Sunday. He warned that the rope was hard to pull and he was right. I pulled as hard as I could but I barely made the bell do more than just a weak tinkle. Thanks to all of the volunteers who made the Open House — and the museums — special, once again.
Fourth, thanks to the Nashville police officers and the Nashville firemen who raised $9,500 and treated 77 schoolkids to Shop with a Cop for Christmas. Walmart tossed in a grant, and — wonder of wonders — guess where it was all spent.
Fifth, (not the kind you buy at Bogey’s in Ashdown or the Party Factory in T-Town) thanks to Tim Pinkerton and the Nashville Chamber of Commerce, and the volunteers for giving our community one of the best Christmas Parades ever!
Sixth, my Christmas decorations are limited to a ceramic Xmas tree made a number of years ago by daughter Julie. I’m so lazy now that I no longer bother to stick those colored plastic birds into their holes on the tree so that it looks like a decorated tree.
The inside of the ‘tree’ is white. There is one lightbulb inside, and it shines through the holes that were made for those birds.
I just tell visitors that the tree only has white lights.
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AN OLD SAYING attributed to a wise old Indian: No one is truly dead until there is no one left who remembers his or her name.
Kinda morbid.
But if it is true, then final death will come early for some football players whose last name(s) are squeezed into the space between the shoulders of their jerseys.
There are many hyphenated names, and some that at least look as if they originated in another country.
There was a college quarterback who played at three bigtime colleges. He got demoted on his first team; then transferred to another; then got demoted on his second team and transferred to another; then got demoted on his third team where he finished his eligibility in merciful anonymity on the bench of a losing team.
All because his momma gave him a name that no tv sportscaster could pronounce. His respective schools were glad to see him go because they had to pay extra to get so many letters sewn onto his jerseys.
I’m thinking that the same fate awaits the current quarterback of the Tennessee Volunteers.
Unpronounceable name.
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MY CHRISTMAS TRADITION. My late wife won our Christmas tree argument easily. She wanted 10 strings of lights; I wanted one.
Okay, I said admitting defeat. But you put up the lights and I’ll take them down.
That seemed fair enough to her. She covered the tree with strings of lights, grinning at the thought of me trying to untangle the 10 or more entangled strings later.
A few days after Christmas she reminded me of my de-stringing duty.
So I went and got the scissors and started cutting the strings. “Wait,” she said in a panic. “You’re ruining the strings.”
Yes, I agreed. I’ll throw these pieces away. New strings only cost about a dollar apiece.
Somehow my solution did not make her happy.
And as usual I would pay a price.
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THINGS I LEARNED from opening e-mail: When I lost a finger on my right hand in a freak accident, I asked the doctor if I’d still be able to write with it. He said, “Possibly, but I wouldn’t count on it.”
Yes, you heard me. I’m groaning.
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WORD GAMES. Two angry cousins of our national political scene: Divide and Conquer. They are having some success.
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HE SAID: “T’was the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.” Clement Clarke Moore, American real estate developer and poet
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SHE SAID: “I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.” Shirley Temple, American child actress, later US Ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia
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SWEET DREAMS, Baby
