I rarely heard my dad use profanity around the family. The swear-y word I recall hearing him say on occasion was “balls.” It always made me laugh. I’ve never heard anyone else use it as a “swear.” These 9 Ties and 4 Bow Ties o’ the Day are for Dad. I’m missing him extra bunches today for some reason, and so I’m wearing my striped overalls—as was daily his custom.
There is a Christmas story that lives in my family lore, which I have heard many times, from many of the actual participants. I have never heard the story told the same way twice, by anyone who was present when it came to pass. I had not yet been born when the event occurred, so I am only figuring as to the “truth” of what happened. I have listened to all the versions of the story, and this is what I have settled on. The gist is true. Some details may or may not be. But this is how the story sits in my as-told-to mind.
Mom wanted a flocked Christmas tree one year, probably sometime in the late-50’s. Dad invoked his belief in the principle of “happy wife, happy life”—and swiftly brought home, not just a Christmas tree, but some flock-goo and a hand-pump flocking gadget. With the bare tree on the sidewalk, just off the front porch, Dad began to spray flock onto its branches.
Mom watched. The kids watched. I’m sure Lyman’s peered out their windows from across the street to watch. Let me just say this: This was back before any real tree-flocking technology had been perfected to even the teensiest degree. The gooey flock kept getting gummed up in the pump. As Dad pumped the gadget, the flocking spit at the tree in streaks and glops and splotches. This was not the pretty tree Mom or Dad had envisioned.
Dad’s patience with the project was thinning. And even as Mom could see it unfolding, she was powerless to stop the inevitable. The frigid air on the entire street was getting prickly, as Dad became—how shall I say it—”vocal” about the clogged flocking gadget. At some point, Momo even emerged from her house next door to ours, to investigate the ensuing holiday hullabaloo in our front yard. As the anticipating crowd grew, so did Dad’s irritability. Dad said some bigly bad words as he tried to complete his flocking mission. I am fairly certain, based on the many retellings of the story, the bigly bad f-word finally flew out of Dad’s mouth at some point. And I don’t mean the word “flock.” I heard that Momo scurried back to her house to find Popo. Mom made sure my siblings made a bee-line into our house.
I am sure Mom and Dad had a brief, tense two-person family meeting out there in the cold, after which Dad likely went coyote hunting for a couple of hours to re-set his blood pressure, and to think of how to make proper apologies to his mother—and to mine.
How did this story end? I have heard that my dad finally managed to passably complete the flocking o’ the tree, and all was made right with the world. (I highly doubt that version.) I have also heard that my parents used the tree in its as-was imperfection. (I don’t think that is believable either.) In the most Ron-and-Helen-Wright-esque version of the story I can imagine, after Dad took off in his truck, Mom dragged the half-flocked pine behind the house and set it on fire—and later, Dad showed up with a freshly cut, naked, better-than-the-first-one X-mas tree. Now, that’s the kind of home I was born into, give or take a fact or two—and I’m proud of it.
Holiday Tie Tally: 128 Neckties. 39 Bow Ties.
