Christmas Tape

"Christmas is a time to believe in things you can't see." So goes the slogan of a certain Minnesota company that makes an "invisible" kind of cellophane tape.

Her voice had that aura of ominousness about it. 

"You better watch out, you better not cry."

My activity of the hour would be impeded.  Halted.

"Better not pout, I'm telling you why."

That voice.  That song.  That angst of near five-year-old little boy.

"He knows if you've been bad or good."

There it is again . . . Christmas is a time to believe in things you can't see.  

Jesus already knows if I am bad or good.  Santa must be Jesus.   Maybe Jesus is Santa in a bathrobe.

I can't imagine the mischief I was doing to illicit that song.  She would start singing it shortly after Halloween, after my getting over the tummy aches from too much candy. 

Maybe I was, again, unwinding the toilet paper, sticking in an extra cardboard tube that I had secretly saved, inserting it down about toilet seat level, then winding the toilet paper up and over the top of the existing roll.  All to make it unroll like a block and tackle system on a big crane.  Sometimes there were two additional pulleys added.  Mother had no appreciation for things mechanical.

Or taking all of the cans and boxes out of the cupboard and setting up a store in the living room.  Using the silverware insert from the kitchen drawer as a cash register to hold and separate the cut out and colored play money.

"Oh, you better watch out!"

Salvation by works.  Christmas presents being the tangible manifestation of perfection.  To complicate the anxiety, my birthday was Christmas Eve.

"He's making a list, and checking it twice."

Or hoping I wouldn't be caught, again, hiding in the closet with a spoon and the package of brown sugar, rationalizing that if I ate the sugar fast enough, then the  worms wouldn't have time to grow in my teeth.

"So be good, for goodness sake!"

Or pulling out the old Filter Queen vacuum cleaner with its hose attached to the top.  It was so much better than Brian's Electrolux vacuum cleaner because the Filter Queen was on four wheels and made the perfect fire engine.  Racing up and down the hall going to a fire would prompt "Gonna find out Who's naughty and nice," which added to the confusion about fire fighters and being nice. 

The modus operandi of both Jesus and Santa was indistinguishable.  Omniscient.  Omnipresent.  Omnipotent.  The aura of Santa Claus was being in the here and now.  The aura of Jesus was standing off somewhere in heaven, holding a lamb in his arms with a lion lying at his feet.  Little children with wings playing nearby.  Christmas is a time to believe in things you can't see.

As the winter coldness and darkness settled in, sometime in mid-December, the ride to down town Calgary on the trolley bus was couched in wonderment and suspense.  Just the thrill of being a part of the big old trolley bus was enough, but there were still adventures to be relished ahead. We would go first to The Bay between 7th and 8th Ave and 2nd Street S.W.  Of course, there was the obligatory trip to the toy department.  Past the counters of perfume and ladies purses to the bank of elevators on the far wall.  Watching for the light at the top of the sliding door, and waiting for the 'ding' when the elevator arrived.  Entering and absorbing the details of how the uniformed young lady would slide the brass gate with all of its unfolding hinge components to secure us safely inside, then push the big wheel with the handle forward to make the elevator go up, and call out the floor number and departments at each stop.  We arrived at the toy floor with its sprawling lot of pedal cars, a working Lionel train set, boxes of Meccano sets,  Slinky's, sets of Laurentian colored pencils, and racks of color books. The assortment of Golden Books, teddy bears, police cars with friction motors and sparking red lights, Snakes and Ladders, and balsa wood airplane kits with instructions that had big unknowable words like fuselage.  Cap guns with rhinestone holsters, doctor's bag kits, hockey sticks, tobaggons, and Dinky Toys.  Oh! The Dinky Toys, with their exquisitely detailed little embodiments for vivid little-boy role-playing imagination.   Of course, the wish book had come way back in the summer, and I had devoted hours and hours to imagining the rewards of both heaven and earth.  I had made my list, and checked it many more times than just twice.   Somehow, my mother's singing confused me as to which list was actually involved.  Santa's list, or Jesus' list, or my list.  They were the same, weren't they?  Or maybe not. 

"He knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake!

I had never seen a Jesus in a department store.  But there, at the far end of the toy department was the manifestation of the earthly temple of god.  The god who knew.  The god who could deliver.  There he was, sitting there, high on his throne.  Accolades of angels dressed as elves ministering to his every need.  Santa Claus was already in town.

Still, the torment of not knowing if Santa would come to my house.  My mother's singing seemingly never far away to reinforce the doubt.  We didn't have a chimney but plausible work-arounds had satisfied me.  Would his checked list for me have checks beside the naughty or the nice?  Would I have been good enough? Would I be found worthy?  Would there be any reward for me?

We walked out from The Bay into the frigid air to notice the clouds of near frozen water vapor erupting from tailpipes of cars squeaking down the snowdrift-lined main street.  We shuffled down 8th Avenue, past Henry Birk's and Sons jewelry store with their little blue lights ringing the bullet-proof glass  of their display windows. 

We side-stepped the lady in the long black coat ringing a bell beside a red hanging pot at the entrance of Woolworth's, and entered into the store to get an egg salad sandwich on white with tomato juice at their lunch counter.  Finding two seats together, mother wedged little sister's stroller between.  My examining the waitress in her white uniform, the little pointed apron, her hairnet in place and her cap on her head holding her up-trussed hair in place.  Her little order pad of green paper, how I wanted a supply of little order pads of green lined paper just like that.  Then to watch her compose the sandwiches.  Extract the bread from a bread box.  Lay out the slices.  Use a little scoop to dip the egg salad mixture from a row of containers with stainless steel lids.  Cut the sandwiches in diagonal quarters and arrange them on the plates with two quarters sticking upright, anchored on each side by a quarter lying on it's side.  A little sprig of parsley for decoration,  fresh parsley no less, even in that bitter cold of winter.  Watching her pouring the tomato juice into tall, thin glasses.  And to observe in amazement her dexterity in delivering our order to our spot at the linoleum-topped counter.  Gingerly I picked up one of the little sandwiches.  The bread was soft and gooy.  The egg salad moist and cold and delectably sweet, and almost pure white like there were no yolks at all in the mix.  Sometimes, there would be a piece of lettuce incorporated.  

Then to Zeller's. There for me to find and to then point to the display bin of bulk candy and order 10 cents worth from the old lady dressed in her starched white uniform, her hairnet in place, her coiffed hair crowned with her little elf cap. I listened to the swosh of the scoop as she thrust it into the bin of Smarties*, then the cascading rattle of candies being dumped on the big scale equipped with the sweep hand referencing a dozen price/per ounce combinations. I watched her titrate out the 10 cents worth . . . and with a motherly wink, a tiny bit more.  With dexterity, she transferred the little colored candies into a little white paper sack and my exchange of dime for treat was completed.  

Ten cents worth of Smarties was far to much for me to eat at one time, so it was only the taste of a treat, to be finished over the next couple of days.  But for now, it was off to look at mittens and hats and scarves in Newberrys. 

Even in the early 1950's, there was the onset of the ravages of consumermas with the silly little Christmas songs of reindeer and snowmen crooned by Bing Crosby and Perry Como and Gene Autry, interspersed with the godly standbys of Little Town of Bethlehem and Oh Holy Night and We Three Kings and Hark! Let the Heralds Sing!  Those festive sounds rounded out the sights of flashing lights and garlands of holly and twinkling tinsel and clerks sporting caps snitched from elves.  The essence of cinnamon and cloves and spruce unblocking stuffed up noses. 

We finally got to the other anchor store two full blocks west of The Bay, that being The T. Eaton Company.  There!  Proof of the omnipresence and therefore the omniscience of Santa Claus.  He was everywhere.  No wonder he could know if I was sleeping, or if I was awake, or if I was being bad or good, or being good for goodness sake.

It was the lap of the Eaton's Santa Clause that I climbed up into to recite my little list of things expected from him, him being the tangible surrogate of Jesus.

Christmas is a time to believe in things you can't see.  So goes the slogan of a certain Minnesota company that makes an "invisible" kind of cellophane tape.

With a hardy "HO! HO! HO! You be a good little boy now," I descended from the throne of the all mighty, questioning, for the first time in my life.

It was then, with the innocence only a little boy can muster, I dared ask the question that is never to be asked or answered. 

Why was Santa's beard held on by Scotch tape?

The Refectory Manager

* Smarties is the Canadian equivalent of M&M's.

The Ode to a New Day

It would be some time before the sun could sublime Jack Frost's fractal ferns painted on the kitchen window. The front door had already been cracked open to retrieve the two frozen bottles of milk from the front step, left there in the early morning hours by the milkman. The shivering milkman's horse, jostling the leather strap of horse-bells while patiently plodding up the street behind him, was pulling the Palm Dairies Milk wagon, loaded with glass bottles of frozen milk stuck to wire-frame baskets. Forty below zero is the same in both Fahrenheit and Celsius.

The retrieved milk bottles were sitting on the kitchen counter. The cream was sticking up a good inch from the neck of the glass bottle. A little cardboard cap perched precariously on top. And once again, the raspy indention on that frozen cream, made by the licking tongue of the neighbor's cat, would infuriate mother.

But the noises in the kitchen.

The newsreader on CFCN 1060 droning on about Korea. Something more about Eisenhower. And the frantic counting by my mother. The counting in reverse. This time for heating the formula bottle in the pan of hot water on the stove. An interruption in the count-down would end up scalding the milk. My little sister, perched in her high chair, was squawking to be fed and would have to wait longer. And then the counting again, this time necessary for making unburned toast. The old General Electric toaster was all manual. And to ignore it was to offer burnt sacrifices to the morning gods. Counting down from twelve would prevent incense of burnt brown bread from rising to the ceiling.

The pot of Sonny Boy cereal was bubbling on the old gas stove. Years later I would see those same thermal dynamics of explosive steam vents at Yellowstone Park. The old gas stove however, had seen a lot of spouted cereal eruptions. But before that could happen, it would take another Eddy strike-any-where match to ignite that stinky Canadian Natural Gas into a pop and then flicker of flame. And how the oven could singe your eyebrows if you weren't quick enough to get the lit match into the little hole in the center front of the cavity after turning the oven gas on.

Sonny Boy was a real-boy's porridge. A little different from its main competitor Red River Cereal. But far different from the Ogilvie Rolled Oats, with its play-money buried in the contents of the cardboard canister. Play money that we dutifully collected and took to school to accumulate enough to redeem for baseball bats and stuff. But then there was the sweetness and blandness and sissiness of Cream of Wheat. That was the delicate cereal for a weekend treat. But Sonny Boy was a multitude of cracked whole grains, generously infused with flax seed so the effect for some was more like Runny Boy cereal. And this porridge demanded its full 20 minutes of cooking. A time that seemed to correlate in some way as a function to the length of time it would stick to one's ribs.

And then the cat. Our cat. Not the one that licked the cream. Meowing and promoting the annoying staggering and stumbling in her persistence to get my mother's attention to be fed. Which then meant my digging out a glob of Perky cat food from the cat-food encrusted can, opened with the cat-food encrusted crank can-opener, scooped with the cat-food encrusted cat food knife and flipping the glob into the cat-food encrusted cat dish. And the more dead that that Perky cat food smelled, the more the cat seemed to relish it. And the more my nose would turn into a turnip as I did my "chore."

The little kitchen was laid out with a U-shaped counter. The far side had the kitchen sink with the frosted-over kitchen window. That section was also the location of the "junk" drawer with a small arsenal of household tools to include an awl that was used to punch little holes in the top of the canned-milk can. Behind the door, that opened onto the back porch and was adjacent to the counter was sequestered the "wooden stick." That was the means of implementing discipline. And one soon learned to never "hide" the wooden stick.

The dish cupboard was hanging above the bottom side of the "U." In it were the stacks of plates and bowls and cups. And a mystery of unfathomable intrigue as to how my Dad could wipe the top of the top plate, and the bottom of the bottom plate, in his process of drying a stack of plates, and then shuffle the bottom plate to the top and keep everything wet wet, and dry dry, and swipe the newly exposed surfaces again. Within my reach of that overhead cupboard, was a set of embossed red and green and blue aluminum glasses. Just perfect for seeing the top of the cold milk by the position of the condensed moisture on the outer surface. An early object lesson in abstract reasoning.

The near side of the counter-top-U was open and served to divide the kitchen from the little dining alcove. The end of that section of the counter was round and consisted of a bottom shelf and middle shelf extension. That middle shelf was just the right height for me to stir a bowl of new fangled store-bought cake mix, my earliest endeavors in the construction of the cuisine of comestibles .

The chrome kitchen table with four matching padded chairs was nestled within that little alcove between the open counter and the back of the front room wall. It was a haven of refuge. And was just big enough to let all of us, Grandpa Martin and Uncle Scotty too when they came for Christmas, to sit there and eat cold turkey sandwiches with mustard and drink hot cocoa. Interrupted by secret trips to the back porch where Uncle Scotty would let me sip Coca-Cola and I would wonder how he could use bottoms of broken Coca-Cola bottles for his glasses.

The wall opposite the counter sequestered the gas stove and ice box. The kind of ice box that used real ice, blocks of ice, from the ice plant out on the Bow River. The kind where the iceman came down the back alley with his truck, and carried the block of ice, slung on a huge grappling hook, into the kitchen, dripping a path of water on his way. The kind of ice, on a hot day in the summer, when we would follow the ice man and he would give us little broken-off pieces for us to suck. The kind of ice box where even in the winter if we were to be treated by ice cream, I would be dispatched to run down to Alaska Grocery on the corner right after supper, to get a pint brick of Neapolitan for dessert.

By now, the Sonny Boy was ready.

The amount sufficient to stick to my ribs until lunch was meted out into my bowl. The frozen and exposed cream had melted enough to be poured onto the irregular mounds of mush so as to make rivers and lakes separating the hills and valleys of the contour of swollen cracked multi-grains. A little brown sugar added character, color, and contentment. Careful stirring could elicit experiments in the hydraulics of bursting dams and flooded porridge planes.

The little glass of Sun-Rype B.C. apple juice with the big words "Fortified with Vitamin C" blaring on the can's blue wrapper was simply the conjunction of marketing, nutrition and government policy. Canada grew no oranges. Apples are notoriously low in vitamin C. So fortifying Canadian apple juice with ascorbic acid fought off scurvy in kids and balance of trade problems for Canada.

A piece of brown bread toast smeared with that awful white oleo-margarine*, a spoonful of raspberry jam from the Empress Jam tin, a little skim milk in a little glass, a Jap orange . . . all the accompaniments to round out the complexity of Sonny Boy cereal.

The radio guy was still droning. The overheated formula bottle had cooled enough to quiet the baby sister. Dad was off and on his way. My egg-salad sandwich lunch was packed. I was bundled up for the frigid trek to school.

The little kitchen could be cleaned up a little later.

Now, it was my mother's moment of refuge to sit for a few minutes at the piano in the front room. She would flip through the hymnal and find some ode to the new day.

The Refectory Manager


*The dairy farmers of Alberta had enough political clout to prohibit the sale of yellow-colored margarine in the Province of Alberta. There was however, a little packet of beta-carotene that was included in the package and one could "color" the margarine on their own if they insisted.

Runions' Shoes

The excitement in the air was simply palpable. The newness of it all. New school year. New teacher. New books. New clothes. New shoes. New blisters on the heels.

Oh boy! New shoes!

The new clothes, however, arrived in a big paste-board box from the mail-order house Simpson-Sears*. And of course it was so thrilling, yet so disconcerting, to hold up new flannel lined jeans that would finally fit perfectly next June when the school year was over. It meant I would have to roll the cuffs up half-way to my knees. But hey! The exposed flannel lining with that Scotch plaid pattern wasn't so awfully sissy looking after all.

But the shoes.

For new shoes, that meant a trip to Runions' Shoes.

The corner of Center Street North and 16th Avenue was a bustling little hub of commerce. A few store fronts south, on the east side of Center Street, Runions' Shoes was one of those old hole-in-the-wall narrow places of business with the bi-lateral display windows flanking the inset center doorway.

Opening the door not only rang a bell to jangle the auditory sense, but my nose was punched with a tsunami of the essence of tanned leather and shoe polish, old wood and stale air. The worn floor planking invited the way in. And to enter meant to jog to the left or to the right. For down the center of the store was a row of alternating circular tiered tables, displaying pumps and oxfords, wedge heels and high heels, patents and baby shoes, and the ubiquitous running shoes, and chrome-framed chairs with black leather seats and backs holding sway to a few matching chrome-framed shoe-salesman stools. And sitting ki-yi'd on an a few of those empty chairs were those foot-size measuring contraptions that would promote the obligatory "Oh my! How your feet have grown!"

The narrow, cavernous store was lined on each side with shelf upon shelf of shoe boxes. So high that rolling ladders would be rolled back and forth and then climbed upon by old Mr. Runions, gussied-up in his black and gray-striped pants, white shirt, red and blue striped bow-tie and horn-rimmed glasses perched on the end of his nose, to find just the right shoe box for the style and color and size in question.

Since this was fall, it was the time for leather shoes. New running shoes wouldn't come until next spring. And so I got to look at, and hold, and smell, and feel, and fondle and press against my cheek brown leather shoes and black leather shoes and then be forced into making a decision with consequences lasting to at least the Queen's birthday the next spring. And when I had made my selection, with Mother's frowning approval, Mr. Runions pushed the ladder, climbed up, and pulled out a stiff paste-board box, coded with the glyphs signifying only to shoe salesmen, the style and color and size.

I climbed up into a cold chrome chair. Mr. Runions pulled over his stool in front of me. He lifted the lid, and inserted the box into the now inverted lid. After setting the box on the floor, he unfolded the paper. Lifted out the right shoe. Pulled the lace out and finished lacing up the shoe. He whipped out a shinny shoe-horn from his back pocket and proceeded to wedge my how-your-foot-has-grown appendage into that stiff protective confinement of new shoe. Mr. Runions laced it up. Tight. I was instructed to stand up. It was supposed to feel good. Mother and Mr. Runions had already had the discussion about how they were to be six sizes too big for me so they would fit me just fine until running shoe season would come around next May.

Mr. Runions told me to wiggle my toes. He pressed down on them. The dimple in the toe of the shoe was noticeable. My mother nodded in approval. But you can't really, really tell for certain, unless you actually look.

And that came next.

The most fascinating part of the whole trip to Mr. Runions' Shoes.

Towards the back, just across from the sales counter was the machine. I stepped up on the little platform. Shinnied up close to the thing and inserted my feet into two oversize mouse-hole grottos. There were three oval viewing-scopes on top. One for me. One for Mom. One for Mr. Runions. And to peer into that oval was to see the mystery of my life. The yellow greeniness of it all. The outline of the shoes. The opaqueness of my toes. The blackness of the little disconnected bones . And I wiggled my toes and curled them up and watched the flexing and the reflexing with awe-struck amazement of the ingenuity of it all. I never heard a word of the conversation between Mom and Mr. Runions about how much space there was between my toes and the months-away Queen's birthday.

The shoe-salesman's fluoroscope was magic to my flesh. And I so hated to be dragged away from that thing. It wouldn't be until years later that I was told of the near lethal doses of x-rays that those machines emitted.

But the next event in the shoe store's enticements was watching and listening to Mr. Runions write up the sale on the Moore Business Forms aluminum sales ticket holder.

After packaging the shoes back into the box, pulling on the string from the spool of string perched high over-head, tying up the box with a little flair of the wrists resulting in a square knot, snipping the string from its source, then pulling the pencil from behind his ear, another enticing little ritual was about to be played out.

The writing up of the sale.

His pencil made that kind of hollow sound on the triplicate sales ticket exposed on the top surface of the Moore Business Forms aluminum continuous sales-ticket case. With the total calculated on an old hand-cranked adding machine and then annotated on the ticket, he pushed the little lever on the side of the case and the triplicate sales ticket ejected out the top end and pulled a fresh new order form from the embedded reservoir of continuous forms hiding inside. The ripping sound was simply neat as he tore off that sale and detached it from the case. The white copy he gave to my mother. The pink copy was stuffed into the little drawer at the bottom of the case. The yellow copy was set beside the big old National Cash Register for reference. He spread-eagled his fingers and thumbs to press the appropriate keys to ring up the sale. With a crunch and ring, the cash drawer popped open while simultaneously, numbers came flying up behind the glass window at the top. After making the change, pushing the cash drawer back in, the yellow copy got spindled on the spindle of yellow copies quivering beside the register.

Now, re-wearing my old worn-out running shoes that now fit perfectly and smelled like dead fish, I clutched a box of brown leather and odiferous new shoes like it was the most precious cargo in the whole world.

It wouldn't be for a few days yet that I would remember just how much new, hard, stiff, leather shoes, could hurt. Ameliorated, or course, with the remembrance of the joy of a trip to Runions' Shoes.



*Simpson Sears was the corporate name of the Canadian division of Sears Roebuck. Both are now known simply as Sears.


The Refectory Manager