saturday evening with mr. t...

and though it's only a bit after one here on the left coast , it's almost dark in mi. , which is evening as far as i'm concerned . so,here is a christmas eve , eve , eve edition of sat . nite with you know who . who has a much better memory than mine , i should add ...

"That was a nice tribute to my brother, and being the youngest of "Our Gang,"
he could certainly be the funniest one. That's a subject in and of itself. When you are the baby of the group, anything that comes out of your mouth is funnier than the older kids.

Merry Christmas to everyone. School is out for me and I can now clear my head.......and my colon.

I am trying to remember snippets of Christmas stories.
Trying to remember when you are 4 years old is very difficult at age fifty one, but I will try a Chronology of christmas from my perspective:

1956-1959 -Very little memory if any. Was very little anyway. All 2nd hand stories.

1960, 61, 62: Absolutely no memory except gathering at Grandma's with old relatives, due to a faded home movie I have.

1963 - Christmas in Canton Ohio with Hoovers. Really the first Christmas I remember anymore. Got a toboggan that year.

Listened to Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini on small record player upstairs......Steve and Cindy insisted.....intellectual material don't ya know. Later listened to Aunt Joann's TV Theme record. Remember that thing?

Played in basement a lot. Lots of Space Angel or Fireball 500 play. No doubt we made Cindy be the nurse all the time........so early 60's! Sorry Cindy. No need to burn your bra...we were just kids and didn't know any better.

Rode a white Horse called Buttons...pissed him off when I dug my heels in, almost got bucked off. (Hey, take it easy, I said "bucked off"). After that I took up snowmobiling..it was safer........

Steve gives my folks a hangar he made in school. hoovers gave me a jazz record by singer June Christe, which I still have, and a Choir record with christmas music on it. These serve as actual proof i was there and this did happen....I still have those records! I don't remember what Dan and Cindy got.

1964: Christmas at my house. Played a lot upstairs (originally an apartment).
Toys: Beetle Bopper, Periscopes for looking around the corners, and some kind of Jonny Seven Machine Gun (Be the first kid on your block, to be the last kid on your block). Don't remember much except Kathy Mickle played Meet the Beatles on our NEW stereo record player (had that record player through 1979 when it finally died). she played "till there was You" part way, stopped it saying, I don't like that song, you can't dance to it. Of course, she was 18 at the time. Now she would probably only dance to that tempo-hahaha.

1965: Hoovers arrive at our new house before a big snow, right about 6 or 7 p.m. My first words to Steve and Cindy I remember well:

"Hello, Joe. what do ya know? what are cooking in Ohio?"* (Stolen from a comedy record song about Tokyo.........explanation not worth it).

We got 10 inches of snow by next morning. Got walki talkies and played with them half the day. Played in snow. Old 62 Ford Falcom got stuck in snow on corner and we all had to shove and pull it out. (dad made the mistake of insisting we go to Church. I'm sure my mother just rolled her eyes).

1966- Christmas in Alliance, Ohio - or was it North Alliance?** the house had a balcony on the back with a walk out basement. The year we got the ZOOM glasses and everyone took turns wearing them (this was Pre- Elton John, but we all looked like him). We played with a highway set for hours in the basement. I also remember listening to radios at night while sleeping in the basement. I think dan and I took turns sleeping in the basement in sleeping bags or mattresses on the floor.
It was shortly after that that steve and I started writing letters to each other. Now look what we're doing after all the years........

1967 - Saw the hoovers off to Germany while Mom had the Hong Kong Flu and stayed home. Got a reel to reel tape recorder that year. Went to Grandma's and spent Christmas with the Mickles.

1968- Hoovers arrive home in time for Christmas. got a German Musical Beer Stein from Aunt Joan. We had it on the fireplace for years. I got a drum set, dan got a guitar. I ended up learning the guitar and Dan was a natural drummer. He probably would have been a better "formal" musician than me had he trained with lessons, but certainly has better reflexes and is a better soloist on the guitar than me.

I gave Steve a Glen Campbell record, not knowing he was into Hendrix at the time. Things had changed in a year....well, look how much we changed now.

1969 - Hoovers had moved to California. End of an Era. Christmas sucked after that (Barry Manilow [aka Barely Man-enough] singing in background "I've been up, down, tryin' to get the feeling again, all around...."...well, nevermind).

1970-1978 - 8 suckie Chistmases, 7 swans a swimming, 6 geese a laying, 5 golden rings, 4 calling cards, 3 star wars, two watergates, and a hostage in a pear tree (in Iran). Except snow mobiling was fun. Dan and I wished you were there for that. That would have been so "us" as teens.

1980's - More Suckie Christmases, but I wouldn't trade them because:

1990-1994 Last Christmases with Loree Timlin. Loree died Dec. 23, 1994.
That means the time I spent home 1981-87 as an adult, for 6 years, was a gift
from God I didn't know at the time. Christmas 1994 was the first we had spent without mom, and the most Suckie Christmases I have ever spent, or anyone can spend. I still get depressed just just thinking about it..........the other one being 1985 because of Grandma's and Vane's passing...equally as suckie....

But as a matter of fact, any Christmas you spend with your parents, in retrospect, is a gift.

1990's: One of those Christmases I had wrapped up a Popeye Spinach can, and gave it to Dan as a joke. As a matter of fact I think it was a running joke for 3-4 years. When he was little, he used to sit on the couch watcthing Popeye cartoons, eating sugar pops or something.

Then one year I stuffed a spring snake gag in an empty Popeye Spinach can. Damned if he didn't discover it while trying to open it, and stopped. During the gift giving routine, Mom was busy gabbing with Tammy and Rhonda as usual, so Dan handed it to Mom. She opens it and out pops the snake...Of course she jumped a mile and a half, and even Dad got a kick out of that. One of the funniest moments at Christmas I can remember.

Since then our kids were born, and the Christmases of the 1960's for us started repeating, or been recycled. Sitting on Santa Claus's lap (up until this year, boo-hoo...hey, I meant the kids! not me!), electric trains, bikes, video games and DVD's and CD's instead of records, cartoons and Christmas movies. ( I used to sit on the female elf's lap, until one year she turned into a senior citizen. "Get off of me sonny, and I'll let go of your personals...")

So it is a different world now, and we're the parents. But at Christmastime, you are a kid again, and I enjoy that the most. Responsibilities disappear for a few days. Life is too short.......Christmas spirit should be year round, around the entire world. It doesn't have to be in the form of Christmas, or be politically correct. It should just be the spirit. Now if we can just get politicians and world leaders and terrorists and other morons under the mistletoe while we bend over........with Merry Christmas tattooed on our butts.......

"Merry Christmas Charlie Brown".....1965."


*absolutely correct,i remember that like it was only 20 years ago...instead of 42 years ago.

**it was n.canton , also known as middlebranch...