Ernestly ?!Ernestly ?!By ERNIE NEUFELD, Weyburn Review Associate Publisher
It has become a seasonal custom. For more than 10 years now, but probably less than 20, the Christmas week version of this column has been devoted to fond, sad, happy, regretful and sentimental reminiscences of personal Christmases past. If I have missed any adjectives, perhaps my computer is suffering early symptoms of whytwokayitis.
I suspect the tradition of Yuletide backwards glances may have been subconsciously triggered by the Ghost of the Christmas Past in Charles Dickens' "Christmas Carol". So blame him! But once again I shall begin my recollections with the declaration that I know you have no interest in how I spent Christmas in 1989, 1979 and on back through the years. But depending on your age, I hope that my glance at the past will set you on a similar path, and perhaps trigger scenes and hopes and auras you believed forgotten.
The first thought I absorb with some incredulity is that little old me, who often still feels immature and naive, has actually lived through most of the Christmases in what we have labeled as the 20th century A.D. (A.D. is really a silly qualification, because it is unlikely that even my grandchildren think I was around during the 20th century B.C.)
Ten years ago I was smart enough to admit that I didn't remember anything for certain about Christmas of 1929, since I was only a few weeks past my second birthday. I'm not sure how far back credible memory goes. But I do remember a very distant Christmas when I was sick through the holidays, lay on the living room couch, and while others made merry, I had to settle for gazing up at a glob of blue candle wax which had dropped onto a pink globe. Or vice versa. Or maybe that was the incredible occasion dimly remembered of a decorated Christmas tree, gloriously decorated and with lighted candles in a darkened room, almost bringing my heart to a stop with its awesome other-worldliness.
Christmas of 1939 saw the country and the world in the big war that many pretended could not last as long as the one that had ended a mere 21 years earlier. I was still at an age where the affairs of nations made very little personal difference. Possibly the outstanding result of the event as it affected me at that time was that we acquired our first loudspeaker radio, a small used De Forest-Crosley, which every Saturday night brought me Foster Hewitt and the wonderful hockey broadcasts from the now nostalgically remembered Maple Leaf Gardens. On Christmas Eve, following the Sunday School program, we would listen to the presentation of "A Christmas Carol" while munching a few of the rare peanuts and goodies received at the church.
Ten years later, just started on a tramp printing adventure, I worked the night shift in the composing room of the Portland Oregonian. My buddy and I had a room at the home of an elderly lady who fed us a leftover chicken concoction for one of the season's evening dinners. She said she wasn't hungry, but watched us with disquieting anxiety throughout the meal. It was finally revealed that she had accidentally broken the dish of chicken meat and feared we might swallow some shards of glass.
As 1960 rose from the (dare I say treeless?) Saskatchewan horizon, our new house on Woodlawn Crescent was near completion. I'm happy that I did not know that in a few months the old cylinder press in the basement of the Mitchell Block on Souris Avenue would finally breathe its last breath, with a threat of dire consequences to my undertaking as a newspaper publisher. The silver lining was that by fall the Review would have a brand new home on Second Street, with a new web-fed press. As I wrote 10 years ago, "It was the beginning of the most exciting decade of modern printing, when offset printing changed life in the weekly newspaper business. Also in 1960, the stork made the first of three memorable deposits at our home. Not all that year, naturally."
Heading into 1970, I was becoming accustomed to a slightly reduced tempo of activity. In mid-1969 I had been banished to Fort San for a brief period with a spot on my long, and given an early discharge on my solemn oath no longer to work 10-hour days and seven-day weeks. During 1969 our son, the eldest of the brood, had entered university, while our youngest daughter had just started kindergarten. Our lives over quite a span entailed countless achievement nights, Christmas programs, graduations and other occasions where kids strut their stuff for proud, doting, and sometimes war-weary parents.
The Christmas leading into 1980 escapes memory, except that it was shared with three grandchildren. Weyburn had experienced a total eclipse early in the year, the Souris River had overflowed its banks more than usually, and the downtown mall was nearing completion. All of Saskatchewan was looking forward to a year of celebrating the province's 75th. I spent the last half of 1979 and the first half of 1980 preparing a jubilee special insert for all Saskatchewan weeklies. I am probably the only one who remembers either the travail or its fruit.
In the closing 1989 column I wondered what the 1990s would bring "that will seem memorable when (and if) I write Ernestly 10 years hence." I guess I'm still writing, but I can report that with six family deaths, four new grandchildren, and vastly altered personal circumstances I must acknowledge that the decade was memorable. And as I wrote in 1989, it is now "one year at a time." Again, I hope the past year has been good to you and yours, and have left you with confidence in the future. Merry Christmas!
My address (also listed on the Review's Website) is ernestly@pathcom.com.
Box 400, 904 East Avenue
Weyburn, SK
S4H 2K4
Phone: (306) 842-7487
Fax: (306) 842-0282
E-mail: weyburn.review@sk.sympatico.ca
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Review (1987) Ltd.
