It was Christmas 1947. I was 13. I heard Daddy tell Mother that he was going to Sweetwater with Uncle Jim. When I asked if I could go, Daddy said, “No,” with no explanation.
I said, “But I was hoping – ”
Daddy again said, “No!”
With Daddy, “No” meant “No.” I’d be in trouble if I said anything else about it. It was Christmas Eve morning, and I hoped, if I went with him, I could get some money to buy presents.
Daddy put on his coat. Stepping out the door, he put on his hat and then lit a Camel cigarette before striking out up the road to Uncle Jim and Aunt Chessie’s.
We were living in a rent house about a quarter of a mile from their house. This was about the fifth boll pulling season that we had come to harvest their cotton crop.
I hated pulling cotton. I would much rather be in school.
As boll pulling came to an end each year, Daddy would start looking for a farm job. This year, he had made several visits with farmers around Sweetwater and Roscoe but hadn’t come up with anything. So we were mainly sitting and waiting to see where we would finish out the school year.
I watched as Uncle Jim and Daddy drove by, feeling sorry for myself that I wasn’t going along.
Lois Marie and Leonard Morris spent the day with our cousins up the road, and Lee Roy was off in the pasture hunting. So Mother and I were the only ones in the house. She was unusually quiet all through a long afternoon. I wondered why she wasn’t listening to “Stella Dallas” and her other soap operas on the radio.
About four o’clock, Uncle Jim’s car pulled into our yard. I expected Daddy to jump out and tell us to help him get the groceries into the house. Instead, Uncle Jim got out of his car and came toward our front door. Daddy wasn’t with him.
Mother had been looking out the bedroom window, so she hurried outside and closed the door. She and Uncle Jim stood in the yard and talked quietly, then he got back in the car and she walked slowly back toward the house.
“Where’s Daddy?”
Mother didn’t answer. She brushed the hem of her apron across her face.
“What did Uncle Jim say?”
She still didn’t answer as she hurried past me into their bedroom.
At supper, Mother was tight-lipped as we all asked about Daddy.
“Did Uncle Jim run off and leave him in town?” Lee Roy asked.
“When will Daddy be back?” Leonard Morris wanted to know.
Marie asked, “Is he okay?”
Mother looked pale and frightened as we finished the meal in silence.
I wanted to ask, “Is he ever coming back?” But I kept that question to myself.
As dark settled in, I saw the lights of a car coming down the road. Uncle Jim and Aunt Chessie and Mother stood out in the yard and talked a long time. They went back toward their house as Mother came back inside.
She said little, but she started packing night clothes for all of us into a battered suitcase.
“What are you doing?”
“Where’s Daddy?”
“Uncle Jim’s car is out front!”
“Will we find Daddy?”
“We can’t go off without Daddy, can we?”
We piled into the car with Uncle Jim, our questions still unanswered. Mother and Lee Roy sat in front with Uncle Jim.
At 13, I didn’t like having to sit in the back with Lois Marie and Leonard Morris. They started singing “Jingle Bells” and ”Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” so I couldn’t hear what was being said up front about where we were going.
We drove through Roscoe and on to Sweetwater, the county seat.
“Are we gonna pick Daddy up in Sweetwater?”
“How will we know where he’s at?”
When we reached Sweetwater, we didn’t stop. As we headed south of town, we knew the answer:
“We’re going to Grandma’s!”
Then more questions:
“Is Daddy out there with her?”
“Why didn’t he wait for us?”
By the time we got to Grandma’s farm out on the Divide, about eighteen miles south of town, it seemed like the middle of the night.
“There’s no light on.”
“You think Grandma’s gone somewhere, too?”
As we pulled into her yard, I thought I saw a dim light inside her house.
Mother hurried to the door. She rattled the screen door and called out, “Momma! Momma!”
Grandma was holding a coal oil lamp as she opened the door and said, “Forever and forever! I never expected to see you all on Christmas Eve. The Lord have mercy!”
She led the way through the side room into the center room of the little three-room house. She set the lamp down on the dresser. After speaking briefly with Uncle Jim, she started making places for us to sleep.
Mother said, “Jim, all I can say is, ‘Thanks until you’re better paid.’”
“That’s all right, Vandelia,” Uncle Jim said. “That’s all right. You shouldn’t have to spend Christmas by yourselves that way.”
It felt like home at Grandma’s. In between Daddy’s farm jobs, we often came back here to live with Mother’s mother. So, just being here took away much of the gloom after Daddy didn’t come home.
Next morning, Grandma handed out candy and nuts and gave each of us a dollar bill. That was all our presents, since Daddy hadn’t come home.
Grandma had a neighbor, Judson Modrall, working her place “on the halves,” but she had a cow and some chickens, and she canned things from her garden. So she had plenty on hand to make a big Christmas dinner at noon.
Not long after we ate, Lee Roy looked out the window and said, “There’s Uncle Jim’s car.”
I ran to the window. Almost before Uncle Jim stopped, Daddy jumped out and started toward the house, almost in a run. He was red in the face as he burst into the big room and yelled at Mother, “What in the devil did you mean, leaving home like that?”
Lee Roy said to me, under his breath, “What in the devil did you mean, leaving home like that?
I whispered back, “Better not let him hear you say that.”
“Let’s go home,” Daddy said.
Grandma asked, “Travis, would you and Jim like some chicken and dressing before you all go?”
Daddy frowned and didn’t answer. I could tell he didn’t want to stay, but Uncle Jim said, “That would be real nice, Mrs. Roberts. Thank you.”
Mother and Grandma pulled our things together while the men folks ate. By the time we got in the car, Daddy had cooled down some.
As we rode home, Leonard Morris and Lois Marie started singing again, drowning out the possibility of my asking the question we were afraid to ask: Why had Daddy gone off on Christmas Eve?
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After Words
This true story has consistently drawn more comments than any other story in the earlier book Christmas Memories from Seven to Seventy. Many people have asked: “Where did your Daddy go? Why didn’t he come home that Christmas Eve?”
My consistent answer has been, “I don’t know. I’ve told you everything I know about it. You didn’t ask Daddy questions. Mother may have known, but I never asked her.”
Like many of the stories in both my Christmas books, “A Dismal Christmas” was first read by a Sunday afternoon writers group which meets at Anderson University, where I was a professor for twenty-three years. We distributed copies of our materials to the group and read our writing out loud as others followed along.
When I finished reading the “Dismal” story to the critiquing group, Lu Oliver, a faithful member, cried out: “It can’t end like that, Larry. You’ve got to have a happy ending.”
“Lu,” I replied, “ that’s what happened. That’s the way it ended. I wasn’t happy with the ending. But this is a true experience, not a ‘lived-happily-ever-after’ story.”
Many of us have prayed the prayer from Psalm 90 with reference to our Christmas celebrations: Make us glad as many days as thou hast afflicted us, and as many years as we have seen evil. Let thy work be manifest to thy servants, and thy glorious power to their children (Psalm 90:17-18).
As much as we would like to think otherwise, we have no guarantee that the scales of justice will balance and that God, in the prayer of that psalm, will “Make us glad as many days as you have afflicted us.”
I hope both my friend Lu and you as you read this story have more pleasant Christmas memories than unhappy ones to look back on. This Christmas, you may be in a house overflowing with multigenerational relatives. Or you may be with family and friends only in memory as you are separated by miles or by death.
Whether you feel the presence or by the absence of those you hold dear, I hope you can call to mind the Baby born that first Christmas who was called Emmanuel, which means “God with us.” May the light of His presence brighten every Christmas for you.
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