Let me begin this podcast by saying that this is my Christmas card to you. Some of you have spent most of a year listening to me tell these stories and I can’t begin to tell you how much your comments have meant to me. I have, from the beginning, looked forward to sharing this one. May some part of this episode evoke good memories of your Christmases past.
Christmas and the Year of the Bike
Christmas was always memorable with my Dad. We all called him “Big Bob” the name he took for the grandchildren and he was in his glory at Christmas. My father was not one to dangle light bulbs from the eaves of the house or put a cardboard Santa and sleigh on the roof, but inside that great big heart, bells jingled, tinsel sparkled and the world was covered in fluffy white snow.
I blame myself and the Great Depression.
I was born on December 25, 1947. I believe that there has not been as big a snow on Christmas since then. Mother started her contractions on Christmas Eve and Dad took her to the York County Hospital. He stayed with her until late in the afternoon when Dr. Settle, Mom’s Fort Mill doctor, told him to go home and get some rest because nothing would happen that night. Mother was feeling better and encouraged him to go. It was a time when doctors considered husbands of expectant wives as unnecessary nuisances. I would like to argue that we are necessary nuisances.
Dad made his way home and tossed and turned through a fitful night. When he woke up on Christmas morning, it was cold and rainy with a little sleet mixed in. By seven a.m. Dad was ready to go, and as planned, walked to my grandfather Case’s house and borrowed his second-best car, a 1939 Plymouth sedan. Fort Mill streets were deserted at such an early hour on Christmas morning. He drove up highway 160 past the Fort Mill Plant (The space is now occupied by the Walt Elisha Walking Park) and out to Highway 21, toward Rock Hill. It would take him almost all the way to the hospital. There were few businesses on Cherry Road in 1947 and even fewer open on Christmas morning but Dad found a small diner and had an early breakfast.* Before he arrived at the hospital, the snow began. When he got to Mom’s room, Dad opened the curtains and they watched the snow cover the ground.
After hours of waiting, Dr. Settle and I decided it was my time to enter the world and they rolled Mom away leaving a nervous Bob in the waiting room. I arrived late in the afternoon of the first white Christmas either of them had ever seen. When the Doctor finally came back to tell Dad that he had a son, he was allowed to see me through the glass and then taken to Mom’s room. Mother’s first groggy question was “Is he pretty?” I guess we all know the answer to that.
Dad was a child of the depression and a member of what Tom Brokaw called the Greatest Generation. In the small mill towns of the South, the Great Depression held its grip until World War II brought the work force back to life. Dad was born in Union, S.C. in 1923. He was six years old when the stock market crashed and his father was laid off at the mill. There was simply never enough money when he grew up. His parents were careful and kept food on the table and decent clothes on his back but there was nothing left for luxuries.
In Dad’s young mind, the ultimate luxury was a bicycle. It was his heart of heart’s Christmas wish but his parents could barely keep their heads above water. A new bike was an impossible dream. The closest he got was when he and the boys in his neighborhood scrounged enough parts together to build a no-frills communal bike that he got to ride occasionally.
The currently fashionable Christmas tree is artificial and tastefully decorated with just the right touch of color. This was not the case for the Hill trees of the 1950’s. In early December, Dad and I would put on old, warm clothes and tramp through the area called Spratt’s Bottoms next to the Catawba River. We would select and reject cedar after cedar until we found the one that suited Dad. He would cut the tree and we would drag it to the car, tie it on top, and take it to the house. Once Dad nailed the tree to its stand in the den, his job was complete.
Mom loved decorating the tree as much as Dad loved drinking his eggnog while he watched. She would turn the tree to select the best side. Every tree had a good side and a bad side. After wrapping several strings of multi-colored lights around the fresh-cut cedar, ornaments of every color and shape were hung by Mom, my sister Connie, and me in haphazard glee. No tree was complete, however until the foil tinsel was strewn on every limb. With the decorating done, Dad would complete the ceremony by plugging in the tree lights whose colors were caught and reflected in the tinsel and in the wide eyes of the Hill family.
Christmas, in the first few years of my memory, was shared with our next-door neighbors, the Davises. Bill and Irene Davis had two boys: Michael, who was a year younger than me and Billy, who was a couple of years older than Connie. We would gather at either house for meals or visits. Mom and Irene were both exceptional cooks so dinner at either house was a treat.
The earliest Christmas Eve I remember was at the Davis house on Gregg Street. I was about four years old and Michael was three. Connie and Billy were not yet on the scene. Under their tree was a bounty of wrapped packages and since I couldn’t read, I assumed they were all for me. All this and Santa had not yet visited. Christmas was the only night of the year when Michael Davis and I were ready for bed by seven o’clock. The sooner we got to bed, the sooner Santa would bring presents. The strategy didn’t work. Dad kept me up as late as possible in the forlorn hope I would sleep later on Christmas morning. Never worked. Even as an adult, I was up and waiting for my children to awaken.
Dad had to go out that Christmas Eve and make a delivery for Kimbrell’s store. He told us that someone was getting dining room set for Christmas. Dad must have been gone about half an hour when there was a knock at the door. Bill Davis questioned who would stop by on Christmas Eve but when he opened the door, I knew who. Santa Clause had stopped by to see us before getting started on his big night. He came in looking like every idea I ever had of him. Red suit, white beard, wide black belt and a deep “Ho! Ho! Ho!” laugh.
Santa sat with Michael and me, one on each knee and asked if we had been good boys. I was quick to answer “yes” but remembered every transgression of the past year. Santa said he knew we were good and cautioned us that he could only come by later if we were asleep. With that, Santa was out the door and Michael and I were dumbstruck. I couldn’t wait until Dad got back so I could tell him about the special visitor he had missed. When he returned about half an hour later, he could hardly believe us when we told him about the visit. I assured Dad over and over that it was the real Santa, and though I didn’t understand it at the time, it was.
I didn’t know about the great depression or about Dad’s aching for a bicycle during his childhood when at ten years of age, I asked for a bicycle for Christmas.
Dad was not a spendthrift and at this point in his life was just lifting the family into the middle class through hard work. I was in for a real surprise on my tenth Christmas.
I woke up early every Christmas morning and Dad always, told me to go back to sleep until a decent hour. On most Christmases he was lucky to keep me in bed until six-thirty. This Christmas, when I called out at about six am, I was surprised to hear Dad start to rise. Connie, my partner in crime, was still asleep and I had to wake her up.
Mom did her usual scurry into the kitchen to start the coffee percolating. Dad, however, was also on the move. He told us to stay in our rooms until he was in the den. Then called us in.
I have no idea what my sister got that Christmas, but I will never forget the bicycle. There, in the middle of the den was a brand-new, cherry red and black, 26-inch Roadmaster Luxury Liner bicycle. Equipped with headlight, rear carry mount, and motorcycle-like tank, this beauty seemed to glow in the light of the den.
Oh, I had a bike already; one of those “help me learn” embarrassments with little glamor and less glory. This bike was made to cruise “no-handed” through the neighborhood and slowly past the house of any girl I hoped would notice me.
I was ready to ride but was still in my pajamas and Mother was calling us to breakfast. Mother’s “Depression Gravy” over biscuits soon made me more patient. As we sat at the table, Dad, always first at breakfast, lingered over the bike touching the shiny red fenders and then the burnished chrome of the handlebars. His eyes glistened and his expression seemed far way.
I did not know then that twenty-five years had evaporated away and that there, standing in the place where my father had stood, a ten-year-old boy. Bobby Hill, disappointed Christmas after Christmas during the Great Depression, was finally touching the bicycle of his dreams.
May each of you find such joy this Christmas
Mike
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*See a more account of Dad’s trip to the hospital in his book, Listen My Children.
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