Because of my mom’s death I have walked hand in hand with the ghost of the past more this year—throughout the year—than I have previously. I’ve always seemed to have one foot in the past, even as a child when I would ask my parents about World War II and the Depression and radio shows. Maybe it was because my parents were older (Mom was 38 when I was born and Dad turned 42 the next day)—I dunno. But the past has always been a companion, mostly sweet.

This year the Ghost of Christmas Past comes to me in the quick flashbacks I always have when I am troubled. The most common flash is of climbing up the narrow stairway from Papà’s cellar, where all are celebrating Christmas or Easter, on my way to the bathroom. Well, I always said I was on my way to the bathroom, anyway. I always wanted to go upstairs, alone, because then it became a time machine into the past, the kitchen with its metal cupboards and dark brown baseboarding, the table and the ladder-back chairs with a red checked tablecloth—if it was Christmas there were Italian candies in a candy dish set on the table, torrone and the citrus slice candy in flavors of lemon, orange, and tangerine—and the new (1950s) gas stove with the double oven that my grandma never got to use because she always cooked downstairs on the converted woodstove, and then through the glass-paned door with the glass doorknob into the very stiff dining room with its old photos and heavy furniture where, in late December and early January, the Christmas tree lived in front of the windows.

My memory is always of the old tree, with the big C7 bulbs and the lead tinsel and the ornaments, including some clear ones going back to World War II. There were still old-fashioned wallpaper and wall sconces in the parlor, where the old console TV always seemed to be running and perhaps there was an uncle asleep—”just resting”—on the sofa. It was a further trip into the past to go through the funny linoleumed “den” and up the narrow, high-pitched wooden stairs with the wallpaper so old there was a smudge mark from years of hands steadying the climbers to the narrow wood-floored hall leading to the old bedrooms and the old fashioned bath with no shower and the X-handled faucets and the big old iron radiator under the window. (We had radiators, too, at home once: 1950s style, not so tall or ornately designed as these 1920s ones. I remember Mom bleeding them.)

There are other flashes on these Ghostly walks: bundling up with Mom and Dad on the way to church or to the relatives and music playing on the radio, driving down Laurel Hill Avenue to see the lights from Garden City, or the stores downtown—the Outlet, Shepards, Woolworth’s, Newberry’s, Grant’s, the Paperback Bookstore—manger sets for sale piece by piece, the candy counters with candy by the pound, the Woolworth budgies, Santa Claus on a throne in Toyland, the Crown Coffee Shop on a cold winter morning…they all come tumbling out and stay bottled up in my mind, like John-Boy’s stories, until I come and write about them here.

I knew I’d only be feeding the Ghost once I pulled the tapes out of the car this morning, but paradoxically it makes me feel happy as well. These are three old cassettes I recorded back when I was still living in The Cubbyhole (my studio apartment in Brookhaven in the late 1980s). When I went home for Christmas that year I bought a quantity of C-120 cassettes from Radio Shack and recorded 10 hours of “the 36 hours of Christmas” broadcast from WLKW, the local then-beautiful music channel. Out of those I distilled four and a half hours of favorites. I’m playing them now: wonderful stuff I haven’t heard in years, "Io Bambino, Mio Divino," several Nana Moschuri songs like "Old Toy Trains," "O Sanctissima," "It was On a Starry Night," "Three Wise Men, Wise Men Three," Alfred Burt carols, Ed Ames’ "Christmas is the Warmest Time of the Year," and "This is the Night to Remember," which still makes me cry.

Plus I wandered further afield this morning after reading the story about the Rhode Island State House Christmas tree: Projo.com had a link to a story about the failing fortunes of Rhode Island Mall (which I think I mentioned we visited back in August and found nearly deserted). Too hard to think of it echoing and cavernous like that: better to remember it when it first opened and bustled with shoppers, when Sears and Shepard’s were the anchor stores, when the funky little glass flower shop was next to CVS on the upper level (later the flower store became the Panasonic-only Impulse store, where I bought my first VCR) and down mid-mall was a funny ersatz old-fashioned place called the Old Country Store with horehound candy sticks, and downstairs was the Doktor Pet Center. Mom and I used to go there every Friday night once I learned to drive. That article led me to www.deadmalls.com, where I read the piece about the old Lincoln Mall off I-295, which had my best friend’s and my favorite restaurant, the Roast House, with its fabulous Turkey Sandwich Special. The Lincoln Mall Cinema was the only one, I think, to show the awful Get Smart movie, The Nude Bomb.

And that site in turn led me to a nostalgia site for the old Howard Johnson’s restaurants…only five left in the country, according to this site, and the ones still extant no longer have the orange roofs. They had a photo of the one in Lake George, NY (which may be gone by now; the photos were from 2001) where Mom, Dad, and I spent many happy meals on our Lake George trips. It was next to the Northland Motel, on the main drag, and when Mom and I made an abortive attempt to take James there to see the autumn color one year, of course it rained, but it was at the Howard Johnson that we had dinner. I still have the stuffed black bear James bought me from the little toy kiosk near the front door.

Like Earl Hamner, I "walk in the footsteps of all my fathers." It’s a lonely trail sometimes and often makes me blue, but it’s been the source of such happiness I cannot help but smile and wish it was still there to make another generation happy.

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 12:31:00 PM

Comments:

thank you for posting such wonderful stories. i love to come here and read your thoughts, you write so very well.

gosh, it has been a long, long time since i heard someone say "parlor" . now your taking me back to the"ghost of christmas past"

by the way, that tape you made i bet is wonderful. i wish i could hear uit.
also, i notice you like the movie: THE GATHERING, i LOVE this movie also, and the "THE GATHERING, part 2". sorry to say this has not been on in recent years and my old beta tape are long out of function. those movies also take me down memory lane. i wish i could see them again. i had no idea there was a book about THE GATHERING, thanks for mentioning that. i'm going to hunt a copy down one of these old days! wishing you and yours a wonderful christmas and healthy happy, happy new year! please continue to write your stories, they are so lovely, and fun to read. peace. sally

# posted by  Anonymous : 9:11:00 PM

 

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