A Christmas I will always remember...

One of the problems with writing and telling stories is that often times one tends to lose touch with what is fiction and what is reality.....I know when growing up my Mom always would remind me of the adage " Tommy, if you cry wolf too many times, no one will believe you"....but I always wanted to tell stories.....granted, as a young Skeeter boy the stories I made up were to keep me from getting into trouble....but I would enjoy going to my special head brain place where I could be whomever I wanted to be and make up stories and retell them to my friends....a true Walter Mitty

So now ....I have to confess.....maybe the previous Thanksgiving and Christmas stories on this blog were embellished a little......ok....maybe they were embellished a lot....BUT... this next story is all fact....and I have a newspaper clipping to go along with it.

It was a Christmas story I'll always remember and one I enjoy telling.

Forty seven years ago tomorrow, December 11,  our house on Sandhurst Drive in Dayton, Ohio burned. 

 I was a senior in high school and had been down at the Univ. of Cincinnati for the day with a couple of friends who were going to enroll there the following Fall.  We had just pulled up to the house and I saw my home in flames. The fire trucks had just arrived and my Dad and his friend were trying to back some cars that had caught fire out of the driveway .

 Dad and his friend had bought this ambulance/hearse and were torch-cutting the rear end off of it in hopes of making it a camper...I still don't know why...Dad never went camping....I guess it was just another of his projects.

He and his friend somehow ignited some gasoline on fire and the heat and flames from the torch set the Cadillac hearse on fire....then the gas tank exploded followed by the oxygen tanks for the cutting torch...it was hot!.....um....yes, alcohol was involved.

 My brother, Rick, who was home for Christmas from Ohio Univ., heroically, saved Dad from going back into the flames. 
                                                                                                 Click here for an enlarged picture
                                                                                  

I watched as the flames subsided after thousands of gallons of water  poured down on the only home I had ever known and I wondered what Christmas would be like in the coming weeks and more importantly, where on earth would we celebrate it.

It was a depressing thought.... All the presents that had been under the tree were water or smoke damaged....Hell, the only clothes I had were the ones on my back. My aunt who lived just up the street immediately said we would move in with her. 

So, I got Mom's credit card to Elder Beerman's and got a set of clothes for the night ....I went to my aunt's house and showered and went out later.

When Christmas came, we celebrated as always (I didn't sing the Ave Maria that year) all of us packed in tight in my aunt's small white clapboard home and tried to be as positive as we could be under the conditions.

But you know what.....it was actually one of the best Christmas's that I can remember. ...We had our family.  We had each other....Everything that was lost in the fire could be replaced and we would eventually move back in to our home in the Spring......We learned that Christmas isn't about the gifts...it's about your faith, your friends and your family. 

Merry Christmas you' all

A Kender Family Christmas Tradition

One of the earliest Christmas traditions in the Kender household that I can vaguely remember was the singing of Ave Maria right before we would open presents on Christmas Eve.

This all started in my youngest of days, when our family would visit the various Hungarian Gypsy tribes that populated the West End of Dayton, Ohio. My Dad, would seek out the elders of the camps and attempt to citify them by bringing them text books and hiring them to work in his machine shop on West 4th St. 

I would wander around the camp fires and watch the gypsy women twirl in their dresses with scarves wrapped around their bodies, sometimes showing a little thigh when the dresses would spin way up high. You can imagine me as a little Skeeter boy staring at those white, fleshy legs, albeit unshaven, but at least it was exciting.

Sometimes Dad would invite members of the tribe or clan, to visit our home. He always asked that they come after dark so as not to alarm the neighbors thinking they might be there to kidnap any young children in the neighborhood.

Dad had converted the basement into a combination dance hall/root garden. He and mom would teach Hungarian folk songs and dances and Mom used the root cellar to store all of the needed vegetables to make our weekly Hungarian dishes.

My two older brothers, David and Ricky, I think both named after the Ozzie and Harriet children, didn't participate much in the singing and dancing. Dave, the genius of the family,  was always inventin' things and readin' school books. He would later go on to attend the University of Chicago and later graduate summa cum laude from Miami University. Ricky, on the other hand was more into the social scene. His good looks and taste for expensive clothes, made him quite the catch for the catholic girls in the neighborhood.

I was fortunate to inherit not only the genius head brain characteristics, but the looks and charm as well. So it was only natural that I was always on hand to sing and dance and entertain everyone...especially at Christmas.

Back to that tradition of singing Ave Maria.    It was my Dad's favorite song. And one day, after getting kicked accidentally in the testicles by my friend, "The Jer"...my voice suddenly changed and what had been a normally young boy's voice....had now reached soprano level....but the odd thing was it only happened when I sang....So here I was joining my family and some other Hungarian friends singing Ave Maria and I was hitting high "C". 

Dad was so excited that from then on....every Christmas Eve...I was asked to sing for the family and friends. Although it's been 43 years now since I have spent Christmas with my brothers....I still sing Ave Maria here in Dallas and of course...I can still do it in my soprano voice.....and I thought I would share it with you.....Merry Christmas everyone.