Written in 2010
 |
| Aluminum tree fad 1950s-60s |
My neighbor, the engineer, down here in Pine Island
Now that we are into the long stretch of the holiday season and have put up our tree and
decorations, I remember from my 66 years; it is the routines and
rituals of holidays that make them special.
The Christmas church and music, the school programs, the family
get-togethers, the cards updating us on old friends, and thrill of kids and presents
are what make it so wonderful. We bring
it to an end when we spend the afternoon carefully taking the Christmas tree
down, packing away everything in tissue paper, gluing back the piece of colored
macaroni on Scott’s homemade ornament from 30 years ago from kindegarten.
I don’t remember
seeing or hearing of artificial trees back when I was a kid. I think there was some kind of all aluminum,
silver colored tree back in the 60s that caught on for awhile, but we rural
folks always cut our tree. For a buck
you could get permission to cut a spruce out in the big Christmas Tree
Swamp St. Croix . Lacking
the buck, you could find a nice red, white or jack pine in west Sterling . We were always planting spruce and pine trees
around the yard, but didn’t like to cut those; we liked a “wild” one that we
went to cut in the woods.
Grandpa and Grandma lived on the
Grandma came through the Depression and knew the value of
money. She carefully saved every strand
of lead foil tinsel to put back in the package after each year. She had old glass colored balls, fragile
tinned angels, stars and clip-on candle holders. She no longer lit candles, instead she had
two strings of lights, one with red and green cotton covered wires with black
bakelite bulb holders, and another the same except filled with bubble lights. She had carefully removed each bulb and put
it back in the original package along with the carefully wound up string of
sockets.
Each light had to be carefully screwed into the socket after
first shaking it gently while holding it up to her ear to listen for a broken
filament. Then the string was
tested. It never worked the first
time. The string was in series; any
burned out meant they all were off. Each
bulb was given a gentle snap with the thumb and forefinger to encourage loose
filaments to re-weld together. Normally
the ailing bulb either started or blinked and went back out—and was
replaced. They were big bulbs with
replacements available at the Cushing Co-op or Nickie’s Hardware.
The other string were the bubble lights. Grandma had splurged some time in the 40s and
bought this set. There were originally
eight lights, but only five continued to work when I remember. The bubble lights were a regular Christmas
bulb encased in a decorative plastic cover, the bottom half red, the top half
yellow with ventilation holes making a pretty pattern. Above the bulb was a thin clear glass tube
filled with liquid, the diameter of a pencil and about three inches long. Heat from the bulb eventually got the liquid
boiling. We would watch them turn on,
warm up, and the bubbling continue for ever; never getting done. For kids who had never yet seen a TV or any
kind of electronic display, the bubbling light was spellbinding!
Grandma liked the old tradition of putting her Christmas
tree outside after Christmas. She had a
real Christmas tree stand, a red bowl with green legs that held the tree firmly
in place and let it be watered. At home
we had crossed short narrow boards with a nail stuck through and a few wire
braces to hold the tree.
Grandma made some flour paste and set up boys to work
cutting red and green construction paper into strips. We pasted the ends together and made the
loops into long chains to dangle around the tree.
Sometimes, when cranberries were available (cranberries grew
wild in some of the local tamarack and spruce swamps) we made them into
garlands. Grandma slid open the drawer
under the seat in great grandma’s old rocker, carefully pulled out a couple of
needles from their fragile gold foil lined holder, and threaded them from the Coates
wooden spool of green thread. We
carefully strung cranberries together in a long chain.
Grandma liked us kids; she called us her little kittens,
rather odd for four rambunctious boys.
Our gifts from her were hand knitted mittens or socks and homemade
candy. She liked the traditions of
Christmas.
One day during our Christmas vacation was set aside to make
what Grandma called “salt water taffy.”
As I remember, you put some sugar, syrup, salt, water and flavors in a
pot and boiled the heck out of it. Grandma had a package of food colorings that,
like most of her things, looked like it had come from a century earlier. We got to pick the color to add each year and
we always picked red or green. Grandma
tested the temperature by dripping a little of the boiling mix into a saucer of
cold water and then used her fingers to try to form it into a ball. “See, now it forms a soft ball down under the
water. When you make it into a ball, and
the ball hardens like a sucker, then it is ready,” she told us eager helpers. At the right time Grandma dipped some hot
water from the wood stove reservoir into the wash dish by the dry sink. “Wash your hands; we don’t want dirty looking
candy!” It was one of the few times we
did try to do a real good job of it. In
the meantime, Grandma had taken the mix off the stove and was stirring it and
finally poured it into a big buttered platter.
When it was cool enough to handle, “Rub butter on your hands so it won’t
stick, and lets pull some taffy!” she told us excited kids. The taffy smell was that of pure sweetness
with a little vanilla or almond afterthought.
We took a big wad into our hands and started stretching it,
and as we progressed, ended with long
ropes we stretched between pairs of us; pulling it out, bringing the ends in
and again stretching it until Grandma decided it was done and we made one last
long rope. We laid it out on wax paper
on the table and Grandma took the big butcher knife and cut it into small
pieces. We cut the wax paper into
squares and wrapped each piece and twisted the ends, while busily chewing two
pieces at a time marveling at what a wonderful thing had just happened; raw
products from the pantry turning into delicious candy! The green or red color showed through the wax
paper, making it pretty enough to hang a few on the Christmas tree to save for
eating as a reward for undressing the Christmas tree after New Years.
Grandpa always raised a long row of popcorn in his big
garden. By Christmas time, the ears had
dried long enough in the big cotton sack hanging on the porch, out of reach of
the mice. “It’s hard to beat that
Japanese Hull -less,”
he commented as he gave us each a small white ear with rows of pointed
translucent kernels, ready to shell. If
the kernels came off the small ears easily, then it was time to shell them all,
and we went at it until the job was done, our small hands worn raw rubbing the
sharply pointed kernels off. Then
Grandpa took the big kettle of shelled corn outside and dumped it slowly into
another container while the wind blew away the fine chaff. Then he sealed it in two-quart fruit jars, giving
one to us to bring into Grandma.
Grandma had one of those saucepan corn poppers with a crank
on the top. You put in popcorn and
butter, set it over a hot lid on the wood cookstove and turned the crank to
stir the kernels. First a few individual
pops and then a flood of popping with smell of fresh popcorn and butter filled
the kitchen. We ate until we were
satisfied, and then took up our needles and thread and delicately tried to thread
the popcorn into a chain, sometimes alternating popcorn with cranberries. Most kernels broke in our clumsy hands. Grandma
carefully threaded the fluffy white brittle puffs one after another, rarely
breaking any, making a long pretty chain that stayed on the tree after it was
moved outside for the blue jays New Years dinner.
Each day of Christmas vacation was filled with exciting
things to do. We spent the mornings
outside helping Dad clean the barn and sliding with our two track sleds down
the steep hill next to the house. One
day was set-aside for making pop-corn balls.
We started by popping until we had two big canners full.
