Oh Christmas Tree!

The boys - Christmas '75

We just put our Christmas tree away for another year and it made me think of a sort of Papa story.  We've always had artificial trees as long as I've been around, but Nani and the Nortons (in other words, the La Fleur side of the family) always had natural trees.

Well, it seems that Dad grew  up with natural trees.  I think he may have told me stories of hunting for a good one when he was younger, but I can't remember them.  I do remember the story of the last natural tree our family had though.

In August 1964 Mom and Dad got married.  Christmas 1964 was their first one together.

I know that Dad stayed in the USMC for a while after they got married and they lived with Nani for a while, but if I remember the story correctly Mom was expecting.  Since I was born in November she wouldn't have been expecting Christmas '65.  It must have been 1964, only a few months after they were married, when Mom was expecting their first child that this story happened.

The house on Kostner always had a huge plate glass window in the front, and they used to have the tree right near the window.

That first Christmas Dad told Mom that when he was gone, if the tree ever caught fire she should grab a chair and throw it through the window.  Once the window was broken she should shove the burning tree out of the house through the opening.

I'm sure Mom looked at him and asked if he really just told a pregnant woman to throw a burning Christmas tree through a window.

Needless to say, Mom was not going to put up with that, ahem, "stuff."  The very next Christmas they had an artificial, flame resistant tree and have had one ever since.

Merry Christmas everybody.

My Daddy Was a Pistol and I’m a Son of a Gun

Dad used to say that there was a ghost in the house.  As prime evidence he would always tell this story.

I think this happened either when I was very small and before my brother Shawn was born or right after, because it was a time when my maternal grandmother, Boushia, was at the house a lot helping my mother.

My Dad arrived at work and realized that he did not have his weapon with him.  I don’t know if his holster was empty or if he didn’t have the whole holster, but he didn’t have it.

He retraced his steps, driving all the way home in exactly the same route that he had taken to get to the police station.  He did not find it.  He asked Boushia and my Mom to help him look for it and they tore the house apart.

Now remember that this was when I was either too young to walk or had just started walking.  I would have been far too young to have reached it wherever it had been, so I was in the clear.

They didn’t find it.  I assume my Dad either got another one issued or bought another one.

Six months later he went into the closet in the bedroom I was in and there, at eye level, sat the pistol he had lost.

My Dad said that this proved there was a friendly ghost in the house that had hidden his gun to make him much more careful about it, what with two small sons in the house.