The Best Christmas Ever

Oh, was it cold that year — colder than usual. Twenty-below temperatures and a 30-mile-an-hour wind teamed up to freeze anyone and anything within its grasp.

Our family lived in southern Minnesota, on a small farm. It was 10 acres of pasture, vegetables and apple trees. In the summer we raised chickens, but in the winter we did only “inside work.” We had a grove, too, that protected most of the farm from the wind. To look at an aerial photo, you’d say the whole farm was hunkered down against the cold and the wind.

That was also the year we decided to remodel our 80-year-old farmhouse. We had started in the fall, by stripping the kitchen walls down to the studs. Then, as so many projects do, we hopscotched from the kitchen to the dining room, living room and added a bathroom.

And that was just the beginning.

Pretty soon the entire house was a disaster area. The furniture, dishes, books were stowed wherever they would be out of the way, all covered with dust. My wife used a camp stove to cook in the basement. We used the laundry sink to wash dishes.

By the time Christmas arrived, one thing was obvious. We would never be able to have the usual tree, decorated with lights, strings of popcorn and paper chains.

There was no way.

Our four boys, aged 10, 8, 4 and 2, did not take the news well.

“Dad, it won’t be Christmas without a tree,” Paul, our oldest, said.

“Where would we put it?” I asked, scanning the rubble of the living room, where a tree would normally stand.

“We’ll find a place,” he said.

I went back to what I was doing, trying to get the kitchen ready for the new cabinets.
I heard the front door slam and looked out the side window. Paul was bundled in his parka and boots, marching across the yard toward the machine shed.

I had no idea what he was up to.

I’ll give him a half a hour, I thought, then I’ll go and get him.
Twenty minutes passed, and I could see that the light was still on in the machine shed. Then I saw him emerge from our grove. He was dragging a tree.

A Christmas tree.

This wasn’t the typical evergreen. Unable to find one the right size in our grove, Paul had sawed a limb off a small cottonwood. It was bare, without a single leaf.
I heard him banging around in the entryway, tugging at the tree to get his prize through the doorway.

“I guess we will have a Christmas tree,” I said as I watched him pull off his boots and winter clothing.

“I’ve got just the spot for it,” he said. He dragged the tree through the kitchen and into the spare bedroom, which served as our temporary living room and dining room.

He looked around the room for a minute and decided to stand it in the corner. He didn’t have a stand for it, but that didn’t stop him. He went to the kitchen, got a hammer and a few nails and some string and managed to get it to stand straight using a web of string tied to the nails he pounded into the walls.

By then, his little brothers got into the act, decorating it and dancing at the thought of having a real, live Christmas tree.

That evening, we all perched on the boxes and piles of books and admired their handiwork.
As the wind outside rattled the windows, inside we knew this would be the best Christmas ever.

Me and Mr. Bond

I’m not one for bumper stickers. Oh, I occasionally succumb to the urge to let my freak flag fly and slap on a pithy saying, but it’s rare.

There is, however, one bumper sticker that I would gladly paste to my rear bumper — I mean the bumper of my car. Unfortunately, it doesn’t exist.

If it did exist, the bumper sticker would simply have five letters: WWJBD.

Its meaning? What Would James Bond Do?

I mentioned this the other day to Robin Mexico, who runs the Star Theater in Stayton. I was there to watch the best Bond movie ever, “Quantum of Solace.” The coolest part about this movie is I have no idea what the title means.

I was raised on Bond movies. When I was a kid, my dad took me to see “Goldfinger.” This was a sort rite of passage, since it was a bit racy for those days, what with women wearing bikinis and all.

I was hooked forever. “From Russia with Love” and “Dr. No” had already come out, so I made it a mission to find theaters showing them as part of double features.
When “Thunderball” came out, a bunch of us high school kids skipped school and took the train into Philadelphia and watched it three times in row — oh, yeah!

The Roger Moore era was almost as good as the Sean Connery era, although the plots got goofier and goofier. I think they were written by comic book authors.

Timothy Dalton was a pretty good Bond, as was George Lazenby. The only Bond I just couldn’t bring myself to watch was what’s-his name, Pierce Brosnan, who looks more like a hairdresser than a beefcake, licensed-to-kill superspy.

As far as I could tell, the only thing he was licensed to do is cut, color and perm.

Then along came Daniel Craig and the last two Bond movies. When he’s not wrecking cars, he’s pounding the you-know-what out of some poor slob and chasing beautiful women around the planet.

Kinda sounds like a typical day for me. In fact, you’ll note a distinct similarity between Craig and me. We could be brothers. OK, maybe not brothers. How about distant cousins? Would you believe friends. …

Anyway, the main ingredient of the last two Bond movies is mayhem. As the father of four boys, I can identify with that.

The other ingredient that I like is the villains. They remind me a lot of a certain multinational investment company I once worked for. My manager was a dead ringer for Ernst Stavro Blofeld. The only thing missing was the cat.

And, of course, Mr. Blofeld met his ultimate fate at the hands of Mr. Bond.

There is one problem about going to Bond movies with me. I make too much noise — not during the movie but standing in line at the snack bar. As I order popcorn and a soda, I keep singing the Bond theme song, the words to which are “Da-da-DA-DA-da-da-da, daaa-da-da-da-da.”

At which point everyone in line begins to slowly back away.