Scrooge picked a good morning to clean the crap out of his heart. Maybe it took a couple nightmares to scare the living shit out of him, but those ghosts did the job.
I took a long walk by myself last night around Riverside. I looked at the Christmas lights. I looked at the festivities through dining room windows and I admired the homes that lit luminaries along their walks.
One year my Oldman gave me the task of getting the sand for his luminaries. I still had shopping to do for myself. So I went down to North Riverside Mall and then doubled back towards the Forest Park Mall.
The Forest Park Mall was built in an old WWII bomb factory located at Roosevelt and DesPlaines, near the Jewish cemetery. My dad loved the fact that they built bombs for hitler at a factory by Jewish cemeteries.
I went to the Courtesy Hardware store at the mall to pick up the sand for my dad.
I got home to find twenty four paper bags and candles sitting on the front porch and orders to finish the job.
It was raining that Christmas. Like I mentioned the other day on the Chalkboard. I don’t remember if it was Christmas of ‘86 or ‘87 or ‘88. I will just say that it was a Christmas from the late eighties.
It took me about an hour to get the bags filled and lined along the sidewalks at 220 S. Lombard. My dad told me I did a fine job as he lit the candles.
The next morning, Christmas morning, my Oldman asked me what I did with the rest of the sand that I didn’t use. I put the bag in a corner of the garage. The Oldman put on his shoes and walked across the backyard. He brought the bag of sand back into the house.
Then he asked me to join him to the front of the house. When we got to the front stoop I saw the luminaries all gathered up.
My dad was still holding the remains of the ten pound bag behind his back.
“Son, can you take these used luminaries to the garbage for me?”
I picked the first one up and it felt like a brick. I tore open the bag and found a stone with a spent candle in the middle.
My Oldman moved the bag from behind his back to show me the bag of Quickrete that I bought on Christmas Eve.
“This is what we get when we send a boy to do a man’s job!”
We had twenty four bag shaped stones laying on our front stoop.
Remember it was raining that Christmas….
…the bag said, “just add water!”
That next summer my dad used the six or seven best luminary bag rocks around the front porch. Several of them remained excellent candle holders. The others were used to keep the Sunday Tribune and Sun Times from blowing away.
Maybe my dad found purpose from my mistake, but I think he really kept those stone luminaries to bust my balls well into the nineties.
I didn’t have any nightmares about ghosts last night, but I did have this memory that I share with you.
I’m going to spend Christmas Day in sweats and do laundry. Watch Christmas shows and listen to The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge because that’s what my dad did Christmas mornings. After he busted my balls for using concrete in the luminaries.
Happy Christmas all you Chalkheads….
…..Merry Christmas, baby, you sure did treat me nice.