Christmas In The Silver Egg

By Author: asdfas
Total Articles: 105
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My husband Dave and I have always believed you're never really poor as long as you have hope. And hope was about the only thing we had in the winter of 1948,when we packed up our little boys and left our family and friends in Oklahoma for the "boom town" of Houston, Texas, where we'd been told the streets were paved with jobs.
Knowing that better days were on the way,we cheerfully moved into a trailer court because it was the cheapest place we could find, and we rented the cheapest trailer in the court. It cost thirty dollars a month — inexpensive even by the standards of the times — and we christened it "the Egg" because it was shaped like a silver egg. At times, it didn't seem much bigger than an egg, either especially with two active toddlers — Mike, age two, and Tony, three and a half. That made four of us trying to live in a teensy trailer not big enough to swing a cat in.
There was only one room in the Egg,and that room served as dining room, kitchen and bedroom; the bathroom was as large as a broom closet. The bed was the size of a train bunk...maybe. David and I had to sleep in each other's ...
... arms
every night,even if we were mad. But we didn't get mad too often — you can't cuddle up to someone like that without feeling loving,so I figured it was good for our marriage.
Because the boys were so little,we could all four squeeze into the breakfast nook — two seats facing each other,with a table between — if we really scrunched together. At night, that little table collapsed,and the boys slept on top of it.
A full-sized adult could touch from wall to wall if he stood with his arms outstretched. No one did,though,because the Egg wasn't grounded very well,and any time you touched a wall you were in for a shock. Literally. We all learned to walk around leaning inward.
Still,we managed to have a pretty good time. The trailer court was full of nice people and some of them were eccentric enough to delight me. One woman, who became one of my best friends, worked as a hula dancer in a carnival. She tacked her old grass skirts up at her window,parted them in the middle,tied them back,and presto —curtains!
"Isn't that a cute idea?" she asked proudly. I nodded,not daring to trust my voice because I was so full of the giggles.
So it was sort of fun,usually. Then Christmas drew near.
Houston Decembers aren't your snowy, Christmas card kind of Decembers, but they can be very nice — delightfully warm with brilliant sunshine and even flowers and green grass. Or they can be miserable — chilly rain,gray skies and gloom. That's the kind of Christmas we had that year.
My background is Cherokee, and never before had I so missed my loving,extended family. Our Christmases in Okla¬homa might not have been opulent, but they were rich I love Daughter, savory smells of cooking and the earth yaroma of pine filling the house.
The trailer court was a sea of mud that clung to our shoes and came off on the floor the minute we stepped inside. Everything was damp,moldy and cold. Christmas seemed a million years away,but it was only a few days away — and there wasn't any money.
Oh,there was a wee bit. David had a job in a car lot — not selling,just washing the cars and shifting them around the lot. We didn't miss any meals,though the menu was mostly macaroni and cheese. But when David and I sat down four days before Christmas, we found that, even though we'd saved like crazy, we had less than ten dollars to provide Christmas dinner and gifts for two little boys.
"I guess there isn't going to be any Christmas this year, hon," David said, and .for once, his brown eyes weren't sparkling. "No toys for the kids or anything. "
Or anything. No grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins bustling around,laughing and telling tales. No turkey on the carving board or special desserts mounded on the table.
No Christmas tree. In a way, that was the hardest thing for me. The Christmas tree had always been for me the very symbol of Christmas,of love and prosperity. Of hope.
Not that a tree could fit in the Egg,anyhow.
I clung to David a second longer than usual when he started off to work. My smile was very stiff, for it was rigidly holding back a sob.