With Christmas on us I think back to some of my first Christmas holidays, like most other kids the important thing to me was being out of school for a couple of weeks. Waking up on Christmas morning and coming into the living room and seeing all those presents was about the only thing better than being out of school for two weeks.
Our parents always tried to rush us off to bed on Christmas Eve night because they would be lucky if one of us didn't wake up before four o'clock in the morning. Of course when we got up they got up, in fact I remember one year waking up just after midnight and going into the living room and seeing that Santa Claus had already made it to our house. I know this made a long Christmas Day for them, they probably didn't get two hours sleep that night and still had a lot of cooking to do that day. But to us kids with all these new toys it seemed like a short day to us.
I remember some of the toys I got for Christmas back then, in fact I still have one from about 1968, which isn't really a toy but a old 5 x 7 canvas pup tent and this one even had a floor in it, kind of rare for that time. I spent several nights in that tent out in the backyard and a little later in the woods around Century.
As I got older and school changed to work my interest changed. I still enjoyed giving and receiving gifts but I also got interested in charcoal smokers and smoking turkeys and hams not only for our family but for friends to. By the mid 70's I was smoking turkeys and hams for several friends and the need to be able to keep the fire in the smoker hot without having to wait a half hour or so for the smoker to get hot. I understand that charcoal chimney were invented in Mississippi sometime in the 1960's but I made a homemade one back in the mid 70's out of two, three pound coffee cans, I cut one in half and tack welded the bottoms together, drilled several holes in the bottoms and put a make shift handle on it.
With this I was able to put hot charcoal directly in the smoker pan to keep the smoker hot. The thought that some one else might like to have something like this never occurred to me until several years later I started seeing charcoal chimneys show up in stores.
For many years I was lucky enough to work right here in Century and was home for Christmas every year. Then after years of enjoying this under appreciated part of my life things changed and suddenly I was having to go out of town to work, and to work on holidays including Christmas.
It was during this time that I came to appreciate what being home with family and friends on Christmas was really about. I'm sure we are all aware that there are millions of people that for different reasons won't be able to spend Christmas at home again this year. Some are working a job that might be thousands of miles from home and some are in military service for the United States. A lot of these people may not get to see their family members for months.
I feel like it wouldn't hurt to stop for a minute and think about and maybe say a prayer for all the people away from home this holiday season, whether it's a job or military service, these people are not only away from home to better their lives and their families lives better, but to make our country a better place to live. The Alger Sullivan Historical Society meets the third Tuesday of the month at the Leach House Museum in Century at the corner of 4th street and Jefferson Avenue, come join us and consider becoming a member.
