ghost of christmas past

Back in an ancient time, my Cub Scout leader lived in a house on the block behind our house on Alden Street. The shortcut there and home was through their back yard, over the fence into my next door neighbor’s yard and then over another fence into my own yard. On that particular December cub scout meeting, I was wearing the shirt with my badges and a good pair of jeans. I was wearing a coat, so the shirt was safe, but I didn’t want to snag the pants on the fences, meaning the next shortest route was not much longer. I would walk from the scout leader’s front porch and twenty yards down the street and then up a driveway that once led to a garage that had been demolished at some time or other. With no garage at the end of the driveway, it led directly into my back yard. That driveway route was to be the route I selected that night.

But, while on the short sidewalk I heard chimes: Christmas songs.

It wasn’t some out of body experience. There weren’t any angels that appeared to me and it was not a Paul-on-the-road-to-Damascus kind of thing, What I heard was just the organist at Quayle Memorial Methodist Church playing chimes through the loudspeakers on the outside of the building.

So, instead of making the left turn down the driveway and toward home, I continued to walk down the sidewalk, north on 17th street, toward where the music being played. Seventeenth Street made a little ninety-degree hook to the left where the big stucco house was (and still is) and then a couple of hundred more feet to the corner of 17th and Yecker. That was where Quayle was. There was a stained glass window on the Yecker side of the church, if my memory is correct—and it may not be. I believe last time I was by there, it was boarded over, so I could not confirm.

I remember on that ancient December afternoon, I stood for a while at the corner and listened. There was something back then about Christmas that piqued the imagination of a ten- or eleven-year-old boy. There was something about the songs of the season that re-enforced the connection.

They still do.

I remember after hearing a song or two, I headed west down Yecker, took the shortcut through the alley and back home on Alden.

It is strange how one can forget something someone said this morning or the name of someone met yesterday, but still have a fairly solid memory of hearing a song fifty years ago.

Like I said, there is something about the songs of the season…

Well, no need to repeat myself. I just said that three paragraphs before. And they are short paragraphs.

However, we sometimes repeat ourselves in Jimbo’ world.