A Time For Traditions

NOTE: Try rotating your phone for a better reading experience.  

Instagram links do not support phone rotation.

December 1959

Peggy Standish  

       "PLEASE, please do NOT call on me.” I pressed my back against the chair and slid down to the edge of my seat until my chin nearly sat on top of my desk, certain that I’d become invisible behind Dottie Dombrowski.

       “Peggy, can you tell me what the word, “misapprehension” means?”

       Rats! My strategy failed. It was no use hiding, Sister Mary Therese had eyes in the back of her habit.

       I hadn’t done anything other than glance at last night’s homework. I grabbed the sides of my seat, and pushing myself upright, made a stab at the answer.

       Let’s see now, I thought to myself, misapprehension is like two words put together, mis and apprehension. “Mis”, well the meaning for that is obvious enough, and “apprehension” sounds a lot like apprehended, which could mean being arrested. I heard Sergeant Joe Friday use that word on one of Dad’s favorite police TV shows, Dragnet.

       “Misapprehension,” I repeated. “Means you just missed getting arrested.”

       Then I heard it, a familiar sarcastic snicker at the front of the room. Only one human being could make that sound. Becky Know-It-All Newton’s arm snapped up like an arrow shot from a bow. Nobody else in the classroom had a chance.

       “I know what the right answer is, Sister.” She looked over her shoulder at me, smirking with satisfaction. “Misapprehension: is a false impression or incorrect understanding, especially of somebody's intentions. As in this sentence, “Peggy is giving her teacher the misapprehension of doing her vocabulary homework last night.”

       It goes without saying that I could not stand Rebecca Newton. There was no reason for her to add that example sentence, but she never could resist the opportunity to show someone up by putting them down. I should have expected it.

       “Thank you, Rebecca,” Sister Mary Therese said and then added. “However, next time please wait until I acknowledge you before giving me your answer.”

       Sometimes, there is justice in the world.

                                                 ********************

       The two hands of the classroom clock met and pointed straight up to the sky, setting off the noon bell. We lined up, half of the students heading for the lunchroom, the other half for home.

       I sat at the cafeteria table with my buddies and reached into my brown bag. What did Mom pack today? Of course, there was the usual healthy piece of fruit, but what about the sandwich? Turkey, salami, ham on rye? My stomach had been rumbling the last hour, and I was more than ready to pull apart the aluminum foil wrapper to reveal its contents. Liverwurst. Unappetizing, brown as the bag I brought it in, liverwurst. I pushed it aside. I’d have to be content with the apple that I usually traded for a Twinkie or tossed in the trash.

       Wormeater (you don’t want to know how he got his nickname) lunged for my leavings. Liverwurst was just fine with him. “Well,” he said to Jeff and the rest of our lunch crew, “it looks like I’ll be busy for the next couple of weeks practicing.”

       “Practicing what?” Jeff asked.

       “Dancing. You do know the Christmas Snow Ball is just two weeks away.”

       The Snow Ball is a party that was reserved for sixth, seventh and eighth graders. It’s supposed to be a fun way for the upper-grade kids to kick off the two weeks of Christmas vacation while teaching students proper etiquette at a formal dance.

       “Of course, I remember,” chimed in my best friend, Kenna, “though no one’s asked me to go with them…yet.” She glanced moon-eyed at Jeff across the table.

       “I’d ask my brother to help me,” Wormeater continued, “but I don’t think he knows any more about the Hand Jive or the Stroll than I do.” Then, he turned to me and said, “Hey, Peggy, your sister Babs is pretty cool. Do you think if I came over she could teach me some of the new dances?”

       I suddenly stopped chewing my mealy apple. Wormeater liked me, but the feeling was one sided - his. Anyway, that wasn’t saying much, he liked a lot of girls.

       "I’ll see,” I said, though I had no intention of asking my sister any such thing. I wasn’t about to encourage him.

       I looked at Jeff who was sitting next to me. He had an expression on his face somewhere between acceptance and anxiety. And I knew why too, it could be summed up in one word, Emaline.

       Emaline Bogs was a big girl - bigger than most of my classmates (boys included) and fully developed (if you know what I mean). Heck! She should be, this is her third time around in the sixth grade and now her younger brother, Luther, who’s caught right up to her, is in our classroom also. Having two members of the Bogs' family in the same space with the rest of us is trouble waiting to happen.

       The season of comfort and joy struck fear in the heart of every male in our classroom. It was Emaline’s tradition to take the cutest boy in her class to the Snow Ball. Like I said, it was her tradition; the boy she chose didn’t have a choice. Worst of all, her brothers were the school bullies of St. Sebastian. There were enough of them to go around for each grade, so whatever Emaline wanted, she got.

       This year Emaline targeted Jeffrey Drumbott or Jeff “Dreamboat” as Kenna called him. He had been an ordinary looking kid like the rest of us, but over the summer, he stretched three inches, his voice deepened and his features changed from round and rosy-cheeked to chiseled and rugged. Though I wasn’t into boys (at least not that I cared to admit to anyone) even I had to own up that he was good looking.

       Emaline sniffed out Jeffrey and strolled over to our table. She slammed her tray down, tomato soup splashing on to her grilled cheese sandwich and sat across from him. “See you before the dance at 7:00 sharp,” she barked and then added, “Oh yeah, my dress is pink, don’t ferget to bring a corsage.” Then she slurped up the soup, shoved down the sandwich and went off to join her brothers. Things must have been done differently in the Appalachians where the Bogs’ family used to live. Around here, boys usually do the asking when it came to dates and dancing. It was clear that Emaline wasn’t bothered by propriety of any sort, she didn’t even ask Jeff if he would like to take her, but then again, she didn’t have to.

       You would think that since he’d grown some and was now only a couple inches shorter than Emaline, he wouldn’t be afraid to tell her to get lost. But you’d be wrong. Crossing Emaline meant that you’d cross her brothers at the same time. The Bogs’ family was stickier than Elmer’s rubber cement glue. If you messed with one member, you messed with all of them. Jeff was a goner, and he knew it.

       “What’ll I do?” he asked when Emaline was out of earshot.

       “Nothing,” Wormeater told him through his beaver teeth. Pushing his thick glasses up his nose, he said, “If you don’t go to the dance with her, she and her brothers will clobber you.” He wiped the liverwurst from the corners of his mouth.

       “Well, I need to do something to get out of this situation,” Jeff said.

       Wormeater’s bushy eyebrows flattened into a single line across his forehead. “You need something alright. You need a miracle.”

                                                 ********************

       That evening, as my family sat around the dinner table exchanging happenings of the day, I told them about the Snow Ball and Jeffrey’s problem.

       I don’t see a way out for him, he’s doomed,” said Babs. She was as familiar with the Bogs’ bullying as I was. “I sure would like to be at the dance to see the expression on everyone's face as Emaline waltzes in with Jeff.”

       “Aren’t you going?” I asked my older sister.

       “No, and neither are you.”

       “What?”

       “We’re going downtown that day for our Christmas outing. It’s all been arranged. Dad is going to take a half day off of work to meet us there,” she told me.

       You would think that my older sister and I would squawk about not being able to attend the school dance, but you’d be wrong. Babs had her reasons, and I had mine.

       I’m sure that my older sister would have liked to go, but there was a rule in our house (actually it was Dad’s rule) of no dating boys until you were sixteen. So I understood where Babs was coming from. In Dad’s strict eyes, going to a school dance with a boy constituted an official date, it didn’t matter if the Sisters of St. Sebastian sanctioned it or not. Babs was taking no chances, she was popular and knew she’d be asked. This was as good as a way as any to avoid the embarrassment of going alone.

       I, on the other hand, had my own concerns. Being on the shy side, dancing with boys in order to learn the social graces of life was something that I wouldn’t mind delaying for a while.

      “We are going to see Uncle Mistletoe in Marshall Field’s department store window,” said Katie changing the subject.

       “Me too,” echoed Jimmy, her twin. “We’re going to visit Santa, and eat lunch under the big Christmas tree in the Peanut Room.”

       “It’s called the Walnut Room,” Mom corrected Jimmy.

                                                  ********************

       “How much does a corsage cost?” Jeff asked me the next day at school.

       “I see you haven’t found a way to wriggle out of it,” I said, ignoring his question for which I had no answer.

       “Nope.” He hung his head in resignation. “Not only do I have to take her, I have to spend my money on her too.”

       “Maybe you could find a way to cut out of the dance early?”

       “What?” Wormeater jumped in. “Are you a ditz? Did you forget that some of Emaline’s brothers will be there too?”

       “Emaline won’t let you out of her sight, she’ll make you dance every dance with her,” said Kenna and then added with a sigh, “She’s not the sharing kind.”

       Wormeater doused Jeff with more cold reality. “You’ve only got two weeks to come up with a plan to get out of it. And it has to be a good one. One that will make Emaline back off without her brothers going ape.”

       “I’m doomed,” Jeff echoed my sister’s words.

                                                   ********************

       I’m sure that for Jeff those two weeks moved faster than the speed of sound. It was just a few days before the dreaded dance when the first school bell of the morning rang. Students lined up according to grade. The eighth grade first, followed by the seventh grade, and so on. Suddenly, twitters of laughter and muted whispers flew amongst the eighth graders at the front. None of us knew what was up until the pipeline of murmurs made it all the way down to the sixth grade.

       Amanda Prittle, who stood in front of me, received the hushed news from Kenna, who received it from Wormeater. “It’s something about St. Sebastian,” she leaned into my ear and said in a quiet voice. “Something about the statue. Pass it on.”

       And so I did. By the time the second bell rang, the word made it all the way to the first grade. And if you hadn’t heard about it by then, you were sure to see it for yourself as the procession of pupils passed by the statue of St. Sebastian. The entire student body knew what had happened to St. Sebastian, except for the nuns.

                                                 ********************

      As we walked in the classroom Sister Mary Therese immediately sensed something. She wouldn’t have to wait long to find out exactly what the source of our unusual behavior was.

       “Sister, have you seen what someone’s done to poor St. Sebastian?” asked Becky.

       “What do you mean Rebecca?” Sister Mary T asked.

       “Why, just look, out the window. I think what’s been done to him is a crime," she said, adding, “whoever did such a thing should be arrested for vandalism or something like that.”

       Sister Mary T walked over to the window and gazed down at the front of the church. The reverent statue of St. Sebastian looked anything but saintly. Sprouting from the top of his haloed head was a pair of moose antlers. A bright red ball was plopped squarely in the middle of his pious face over his nose, and a long green and white striped scarf straddled his neck. The branches of the sculptured tree that the marble martyr was tied to, glimmered with silver tinsel icicles dangling in the winter wind.

       Though I couldn’t swear by it, I thought I heard her start to laugh. She quickly covered her mouth with her hand and changed her tone. “Who on earth would do such a disrespectful thing?” Sister Mary T asked, clearing her throat.

       Of course, she didn’t directly ask Know-It-All Newton, but she just might as well have.

       Becky folded her arms across her chest with enough attitude and arrogance that would have given President Eisenhower an inferiority complex. “That’s not hard to figure out,” she said. “Who do you think would have enough nerve to commit what is practically a sacrilege?”

       With that, the entire class turned around and looked at Luther and Emaline Bogs.

      “What?” Luther stared at us like a deer caught in the headlights of a car. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t have nothin’ to do with it.” Though he tried to fight against it, he couldn’t help but cast an eye in his sister’s direction.

       “Hey! It wasn’t me neither!” she said.

       While the two of them were busy trying to defend themselves from the suspicions of Sister Mary T and the students, I pulled on the sleeve of Jeff’s sweater and whispered to him. “You’d do just about anything to get out of taking Emaline to that dance wouldn’t you?”

       “Sure I would,” he answered and looked at me like I was crazy for even asking.

       “Well, here’s your chance.”

       There was a puzzled expression on Jeff’s face. I could see I would have to do some explaining. “Listen,” I said, “if Luther Bogs goes down for this, he’s sure to get expelled. He’s already been suspended twice this year. You get expelled on your third offense.”

       I could see that the power of understanding was penetrating Jeff’s brain. A look of realization crept across his face as he hung on to my every word.

       “If you said you were the one who dressed up St. Sebastian like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and take the fall for Luther and Emaline, you’ll be the one who gets suspended and…” I dragged out the word so Jeff could fill in the rest of the sentence.

       “... I won’t be able to go to the dance!” he said.

       “What’s more,” I added, “the Bogs will respect you for it, and Emaline will never be able to bother you again.”

                                                    ********************

       Sentenced to a suspension of two weeks, Jeff had more than enough time to miss the dance and then some. I told Mom and Dad the whole story (well, actually not the whole story) of how Jeff took the fall for Luther and Emaline. I just left out the reason why he did it.

       “That was quite noble of him,” Mom said. It was the way she used the word noble that made me uncertain of how much of the story she believed. “I have an idea. Since you’re not going to the dance and neither is he, why not invite him to come along with us on our holiday outing?”

       As if my raised eyebrows formed question marks on my forehead, Mom answered, “Don’t worry; your father won’t think it’s a date.”

                                                    ********************

       The ride on the El train was not my favorite thing in the world. But, it was a convenient couple of blocks from our house, and a quick means to an end. In less than a half an hour, we would arrive in the heart of downtown Chicago.

       It was like looking death in the face when I stood on the skinny platform of the station. Every so often, I would read about people that were electrocuted on those tracks in the newspaper, fried like eggs on a Sunday breakfast. And if that wasn’t enough to make you back away from the edge, there was always the wind that the El train created when it roared in, ready to suck you under its wheels. I didn’t feel safe until I was on board.

       The train threaded through the city at roof top level, flashing unfamiliar neighborhood scenes from its windows. It was a slide show of seedy side streets, back porch life, and a peek into enticing ethnic areas that were as foreign to me as a different country. Just as I got used to my bird’s eye view, the train dove into the darkness of the subway. A continuous howl echoed from the El against the walls of the underground tunnel and made it nearly impossible to carry on a conversation. Getting off of that train was the best part of the ride.

       From this cold, dark, dingy and graffitied cavern, we floated up on the escalator and out into the bright blue of the sky. Tall elegant buildings that seemed to touch the clouds formed a concrete canyon filled with bustling people, dazzling lights, and traffic. Babs held on to Katie while Jeff and I held on to Jimmy keeping them safe from being mowed over by fast moving shoppers on crowded crosswalks, or being blown away by the east breeze whipping off the icy waves of Lake Michigan. Mom held Danny close, shielding him from the cold. I didn’t think she had to worry, though; Danny was bundled in a snowsuit so thick he looked like the Michelin Man.

       Jimmy started to talk but neither Jeff nor I could understand him. He pulled the scarf from his mouth that muffled his words. “Dad! There’s Dad!”

       I had to squint to see the man that Jimmy’s red-mittened hand was pointing to. But yes, it was Dad alright, standing beneath the Great Clock of Marshall Field’s Department store.

       When we met up with my father beneath the hovering timepiece on State Street, we said our hellos and immediately started the beginning of our Christmas tradition with the tour of Marshall Field’s windows. They were brimming with the red and green of Christmas, holiday fantasies, and whimsical characters. The twins, Jimmy, and Katie, pressed their noses against the panes, they couldn’t get close enough to the festive magic. It was one eye-candy object right after the other. Uncle Mistletoe, a little elf with wings, flew around a miniature replica of the giant Christmas tree that was inside the store while animated characters hammered and sawed, making new trains, beautiful dolls, and other toys. Christmas mice danced in the kitchen and made scrumptious looking pastries and sweet treats. Finally, when we finished, our red noses chilled, our eyes watering from the biting cold, we stepped inside.

       The store smelled of high priced perfume, Frango mints, and expensive chocolate. Everywhere I looked from floor to ceiling was embellished with a lavish garland of gold and silver or some other kind of holiday paraphernalia. The entire place glittered, shimmered, and shined.

       “Are you going to ask Santa for something too?” Katie asked Jeff.

       Jeff looked at me with a half grin on his face. “I think I’m a little too big to sit on his lap,” he said to my sister.

       “Then, how can you tell Santa what you want from him? How will he know what to bring you?”

       “Don’t you know anything?” Jimmy said to his twin. “He’ll do what Babs and Peggy are going to do.”

       “What’s that?” I asked Jimmy.

       “Write him a letter of course,” he answered.

       “Oh.” Katie sniffed. “Well, I’m glad I get to sit on Santa’s lap, cause all I can write is my name.”

                                               ********************

       After the little ones' visit to Santa, came my favorite part of the Standish Christmas tradition, hot chocolate heaped with a mound of whipped cream and a slice of Yule log cake beneath the giant fir tree.

       As we walked into the elegant Walnut Room restaurant with the magnificent Great Tree towering above us, Jeff looked up, his eyes sparkling with the reflection of the lights on the tree. “Wow!” was all he could say.

       The waiter seated us at a table close enough to see our faces in the giant ornaments.

      “I’ve never been here before,” said Jeff, as he sat between Dad and me. “It was really nice of your family to let me join in.”

       “Well, my Mom thinks you deserved a reward, for helping out with the less fortunate,” I told him.

       “The less fortunate?”

       “That’s what she calls the Bogs kids. She says that she thinks they don’t have the same advantages as most children. But then, she doesn’t know them like we do,” I added. “Anyway, Mom thought that by taking the blame for Luther and saving him from getting expelled, you were being “noble” and should be rewarded.”

        “But, I…” Jeff was about to blurt out the whole premise behind his act of supposed nobility when I hushed him up.

        I removed my hat and scarf and started to work on unbuttoning my wool coat. One of them was hard to undo, so I pulled off my glove to make it easier. A single strand of silver tinsel fell out from the glove and floated down. I was able to scoop it up in midair before it landed on the floor, but not before Jeff caught sight of it.

       I quickly shoved it into my pocket and didn’t say a word, but then, I didn’t have to. Jeff’s eyes twinkled, and it wasn’t because of the Christmas lights.

                                                              The End

Follow this link to Tour Chicago Christmas of the past at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juJTB7fxT6s

About the photos

Photo 1

Marshall Field's Department store created the Uncle Mistletoe character to compete with Montgomery Ward's, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Uncle Mistletoe often appeared in their fantasy windows and was usually placed on top of the fully decorated, 45 foot Great Tree in the center of the Walnut Room restaurant.

Photo 2

The Great Clock where Peggy’s family met up with her father to mark the start of their Christmas tradition still hangs on the Marshall Field’s building (now Macy’s).

Follow this link to see the Great Tree at Macy’s (formerly Marshall Field’s)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dgaken/5248627920/