Christmas in Hamlin

Hooray--tomorrow is December! I have been thinking recently of a Christmas celebration at home in Hamlin when I was about 12. My mom's relatives had come from Abilene--that rarely happened because we always met in Abilene at my Granny Tucker's house.

My dad and uncles Bud and Tuck were playing 42 (a Texas domino game) in the living room on a card table. The demolished tree was in the background. There wonderful smells coming from the kitchen of turkey and cornbread dressing. There my aunts, grandmother and mom were putting the finishing touches on the meal. Trudy was beating the whipping cream for our traditional fruit salad. Lynette was tearing lettuce for the green salad (lettuce, tomatoes, Miracle Whip--no bags or fancy dressing back then). Jean was stirring the giblet gravy and Mom and Granny were monitoring the rolls and sweet potatoes in the oven.

On the table were the centerpieces of the dessert selections: My grandmother's 3 layer pecan cake with praline frosting and pecan halves in rows all over the cake and my mother's fresh coconut cake (we had earlier broken the coconut with a hammer and saved the coconut milk for the frosting). There were here and there tins of homemade candy: fudge, date loaf, soft peanut candy (a speciality of my mom) and ribbons of hard candy available only this time of year. And of course, the required chocolate and coconut cream pies were there too.

My cousins, brothers and I were running amuck outside playing hide and seek, kick the can and cowboys and Indians. We traded out running inside to check the food.

When the time came, the adults ate at the kitchen table (we had no dining room) and the kids ate at the card table, joyfully plowing over each other for a portion of all the food which also included green beans, mashed potatoes and a ham one of the aunts had brought.

It was a small celebration and one that I didn't appreciated at the time. Now I remember it fondly as a sweet time in a calm 1950's world.