Christmas Past at 901 Union Street...

901 Union Street (Now renumbered to 847 Union Street), Schenectady, NY --
The house where I grew up

The imposing house, about which I have written before, stands on the northeast corner of the intersection of Union Street (County Road 146) and Gillespie Street in Schenectady, New York.  It was a large enough home to contain both our family (3 children, 2 parents, and my maternal grandmother) as well as my father's dental offices and, waiting room, and laboratory.  My brother and I shared a bedroom, my sister Ann had her own room on the third floor, my parents had a bedroom, and my grandmother had a bedroom.  And there were enough bathrooms to handle the needs of 6 people.

Whenever Christmas rolls around, and especially when I see the movie "A Christmas Story," I recall the many rituals and traditions that made Christmas so special in that home that I dwelled in for my first 18 years.  I'd like to share some of those recollections.

Decorating the house was a big deal.  We lived in a neighborhood dominated by doctors and dentists.  It was important to "keep up with the Jones's."  So the decorating started a little before Thanksgiving.  We wrapped the front porch columns with evergreen garlands, framed windows with lights, and had a small lighted tree on the porch to greet the patients unfortunate enough to have scheduled dental work around the holidays.

The "big" tree always occupied the same location -- in the center of the dining room bay window.  These 3 windows had window seats covered with dark crimson corduroy tufted cushions.  Under the seats, in cubbies protected with a grille of ornate spindles resided three cast iron radiators that kept those seats toasty warm.  The tree had to be kept far enough away from those heaters to prevent it from drying out too quickly.  Thus, we could walk (or crawl) around the back side of the tree to keep track of any new gift boxes that might appear in the weeks leading up to Christmas.

The circle encloses the bay widow where our tree always stood.

There was always the ritual of watching our father arrive with the tree strapped to the top of our 1940 Chevrolet, untying it and cutting the base of the trunk just so, and mounting it in its stand ever so carefully to ensure it would not lean one way or another.  Then we'd all help get it through the kitchen door and take it through the butler's pantry to the dining room, shedding needles all the way.  We kids would all help put water in the base to keep the tree alive.  And my father always dissolved aspirin in the water because he had read somewhere that it extended the life of the tree.

A 1940 Chevrolet, similar to
my father's "tree hauling  car

After Mom vacuumed up the debris, we'd all go to the attic to retrieve the several boxes of ornaments to start unwrapping them and reminiscing about their origins or arguing about who got to hang the "best" ones.  Dad would have strung the lights while we were retrieving the ornaments.  Last, of course, was the hanging of tissue-thin strips of lead tinsel (Yes, tinsel was lead before it was aluminum before it was plastic.).  We were admonished to drape the individual strands, never to toss them. 

After the tree doily was placed around the base came my favorite activity.  We set up my brother's Lionel electric train in an oval around the base of the tree.  He had received his train on his first birthday in September 1937.  My dad wanted to make sure he was raised understanding the importance of trains (notwithstanding the fact that my father had never owned an electric train when he was a child).  After all, Schenectady was the home of the main plant of the American Locomotive Company, ALCO.  By the time I was growing up, they had produced over 50,000 steam locomotives!

My brother's Lionel set was pulled by
their 1937 Torpedo locomotive

Church played a huge role in our collective lives.  This was a family of Irish Catholics (My mother's maiden name was McLaughlin.).  And we lived within a city block of St. John the Evangelist Church, a daunting edifice that dominated the city's skyline with its 220-ft. central spire, topped with a 14-foot cross.  So it's only natural that the pace of church-related activities picked up around the celebration of Christ's birth.

All three children in the Mead family attended St. John's parochial school.  We were taught by Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, a conservative French-Canadian order of nuns.  If you attended St. John's and were a boy, you were expected to be trained as an altar boy and to be a part of the boy's choir.  My brother Bill and I did both.  So at Christmas, our sister Ann would be part of a Christmas pageant while Bill and I were part of an endless series of choir commitments and seasonal Masses ranging from 6:00 AM daily Mass to the Solemn High Midnight Mass that was typically more than 2 hours long.  My mother and grandmother were constantly laundering and ironing our cassocks and surplices that had to be perfect for every service.

It took an army of altar boys for a solemn high Mass in the 1950s

Because we didn't get to bed before about 2:30 on Christmas morning, the opening of presents usually was around 10:00 AM once Bill and I were old enough to be involved in church obligations.  Before that time, we started hounding our parents at the crack of dawn to get up and go downstairs to see what Santa had brought.

The Irish Mail pedal toy I received
shortly after the war

My memory of very special gifts lasts 'til today.  My sister and I each received a brand new 24" Columbia bicycle in 1945 - mine was red, hers was blue.  Electric trains weren't available during World War II, but I received my own Lionel train set in 1946.  I got my own baseball glove in around 1947.  I also received a riding machine called an "Irish Mail" at about the same time.  New shoes (always from Patton & Hall shoes, where my godfather worked) seemed to be a favorite gift.  I almost always wanted something from the A.C. Gilbert catalog.  At various times, I received an Erector set (Size 8-1/2, the ferris wheel set), a chemistry set, and a microscope set.  

The A.C. Gilbert Electric Eye laboratory

In 1949, I received an electric eye set that I played with endlessly.  It was described in the Gilbert catalog that year, "Uncanny! Amazing! Thrilling!  Can you think of anything more uncanny than making a bell ring by striking a match — turning a radio off or on by the flick of a flashlight — making the rising sun operate an alarm? These are only a few of the amazing things you can do with the mysterious Gilbert Electric Eye. By simply waving your hand you can stop and start American Flyer Trains or Erector action models — turn electric lights on and off. Set contains battery box, electric light socket with bulb, RCA Photo-electric tube, RCA Amplifier tube, tube shade, and power unit with variable potentiometer. Operates on 110 volt A.C. only. Packed in blue metal cabinet with illustrated manual of stunts. $13.75. Denver and west, $14.45."  Remember when things cost more in "Denver or West"?

The Lionel diesel locomotives that I
received in 1950 by saving up $21.50

In 1950, Lionel introduced the diesel locomotive Model 2344P, a New York Central twin unit with their latest technology, Magnetraction.  I simply had to get one for Christmas but my parents said that $42.95 for a toy was absolutely out of the question.  My grandmother came to my rescue.  She told me (without my parents' knowledge, I later found out) that if I would save half the cost, she'd pay the other half. I worked for several weeks, washing and waxing cars and washing windows for every neighbor I knew, and finally saved up the $21.50 to give Nana.  I got the locomotive for Christmas.  My parents were furious with my grandmother, but they didn't make me return the locomotive.

A similar thing happened in 1951, when A.C. Gilbert had introduced their Atomic Energy Lab.  I wrote a previous blog entry about my Grandmother's largesse that Christmas.  It had to have been the biggest surprise I ever had on a Christmas morning.

I feel very blessed to have grown up when and where I did.  There was almost always snow at Christmas time.  I always felt secure in a stable (if somewhat dysfunctional) family.  We had lots of friends and relatives to engage in holiday activities.  It was, in retrospect, a pretty magic time.