John (Gene) Crowley as Toddler in the Snow (Click to Enlarge)
A week before Christmas, snow drifts banked up to the windows of the little ramshackle ranch house on Thunder Butte Creek. My brother Neal had cut a Black Hills spruce from a cut bank across the creek from the house, he hauled it home, dragging it through the snow, behind his horse. When Neal got the tree home, he nailed a couple of small boards together to form an “X” and nailed that to the bottom of the tree.
About the same time my Mother had gotten some Christmas decorations from Montgomery Ward company, in the mail, mostly fuzzy red and green paper ropes with red paper bells attached. She strung these decorations up across the ceiling . Mother then started popping corn (regular field corn) and we spent several days stringing this corn in the form of a large necklace, with needle and thread. Finally, with the tree set up in the front room where the wood heating stove was, she strung the pop corn necklace around the tree in circles. Somewhere she had gotten some small candles , and these were attached to the branches of the tree by dripping candle wax on to the branch, then sticking the bottom of the candle in an upright position on to the branch. These candles were probably all lit only once and that would have been for an hour or so on Christmas eve.
I remember Neal coming home, plunging through the snow-banks one day and going to the barn with a bag over his shoulders. I made note of the fact that when he came to the house he no longer had the bag.
Christmas was very quiet. You see, there was no radio, no television, nothing portable, no one with ear plugs or any noise of any kind. There was no electricity, no appliances--only a wood burning cook stove, a pot belly, a wood burning stove for heating the entire house, beds and tables. Inside the front door was a small bench on which was located a bucket, with dipper, for drinking water and a wash basin for washing hands. The towel hung from a nail on the wall .
The mail box was about eight miles away. So, before Christmas we always managed to get to the mail box on our saddle horse, at least every couple of days. There was almost always a large box sitting on the ground by the mail box from my mother's sister in North Dakota, my Aunt Cynthia. She almost always sent a box—usually dresses for my mother and my sister, Cece, and maybe shirts for the boys and a little toy and a woolen scarf for me. This package was always eagerly awaited, because it was basically the only 'presents' we got.
Christmas eve was pretty much like any other winter night. Everybody sat around the pot belly stove , with the stove door open for light, and everybody talked, except for me. Kids never talked unless they asked if they could say something. Cece loved our father and often sat on his lap in front of the fire. We boys sat on the floor. And mother usually tried to get things put away for the night. Soon the stories about the Christ child were all told and people took their turn going to the 'outhouse' which was about 200 yard down the hill, in back of the house. Since they took no chances of me wetting the bed at night, I would usually get chased out of the house a couple of times during the night to visit the outhouse. Twenty degrees below zero was not uncommon, with deep snow everywhere and I do not ever remember wearing my shoes on the nightly visits. In spite of the bitter cold and the freezing feet, I remember the brilliant star studded sky, the snow hanging thick, covering the boughs of the trees, icicles hanging from the roofs of the buildings, and always the howl of coyotes and wolves on the surrounding hills.
Christmas Eve differed very little from any other night except all the talk about Santa Claus stirred my imagination and when everyone was in bed and it was very dark I could hear when he was coming. There would be tiny jingling of bells off in the distance. I would push back the ice laden comforter so I could hear better. Sure enough I could hear him. Then there would be a thud on the roof. No one woke, but I froze, rigid in my bed, listening, listening, listening when I heard something out by the Christmas tree. Finally, totally stressed out and tired, I fell asleep again.
Christmas Day in the morning, I could hear my Dad breaking the ice in the water bucket for water to wash up, then stoking the heater and cook stove with firewood. I could smell the smoke as the match caught. The warm air wafted in from the front room and I was out of bed like a flash to see what Santa had left.
One Christmas morning I remember a couple little things in my stocking which hung by the tree, maybe warm socks and, once, a real honest-to-God orange. I am not sure if I had ever seen an orange before, so this was an unbelievable treat. Someone showed me how to peel the orange. That was pure heaven. It was twenty degrees below zero outside and I was sitting there proud as royalty, eating a sweet orange in front of the fire. That was a Christmas to remember.
Christmas dinner was always a fine affair, often in the company of my family and any wandering cowboys who happened to be out pulling cows out of the drifts. Mother fixed what she had—sometimes a turkey and sometimes a chicken. But, it was always delicious, with gravy thick with bacon grease and plenty of butter and lard to smear on thick pieces of home made bread.
After dinner, the men sat around and smoked. I played with my new knife from the dime store. And, my mother washed and put things away. So ended another beautiful Christmas day on Thunder Butte creek.
--John Crowley
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