DECEMBER 16, 2024 – If you read last Saturday’s post, you know the TV situation in our house during my “growing up years.” Omitted was mention of notable exceptions: the quadrennial presidential nominating conventions, the Olympics and the first manned moon-landing. For these events, Dad rented a TV—from Joe’s Western Auto hardware store in downtown Anoka, of course, a block from Dad’s office at the courthouse.
One other exception was during an extended visit by “Gaga,” our nickname for our New Jersey grandmother. Every fall, Grandpa attended the annual Chicago convention of the American Trucking Association, in which he was very active and of which he’d even served a term as president. One year, when I was eight, Gaga and Grandpa drove from New Jersey to Minnesota, where he dropped off Gaga along with their big brand-new Cadillac[1] before Grandpa then flew down to Chicago for the ATA convention. Gaga had several TV shows she liked to watch, so in deference to her, my parents arranged for a TV rental during her week-long stay.
Gaga’s presence gave my sisters and me license to watch a few shows of our own. One day after school we discovered reruns of Amos ‘n’ Andy on a local channel. Upon entering the living room, Gaga joined us. Although Christmas happened to be a couple of months away, the Amos ‘n’ Andy episode that we’d stumbled upon revolved around a Christmas theme. I forget the precise details, but they involved one of the two comics playing the slapstick role of Santa Claus.
It took a few frames for me to realize specifically, the earth-shattering truth that was being revealed—not to me, since I was already informed about the nature of Santa, but to our youngest sister Jenny. Upon recognizing my complicity in wrecking prematurely her central childhood fantasy, I sprang out of my seat and said, “Jenny! Quick! Follow me!”
Though she’d figure out soon enough that I wasn’t the boss of her, at that stage of our lives, I still wielded sufficient influence to prompt her quick and unquestioning obedience. She followed me straight up the staircase beyond the living room. One quick turn down the upstairs hallway and we were out of earshot of Amos ‘n’ Andy.
“What is it?” she said.
“Shhhhh!” I signaled. “I’ve been trying to find a way to get out of earshot of Nina and Elsa [our older sisters] to talk about what we should get them for Christmas.”
“When’s Christmas?”
“Well, in a while, but we need to be thinking ahead,” I said. If Jenny hadn’t still been susceptible to my will, she would have been greatly suspicious. Since when had I become so thoughtful toward anyone, let alone our siblings? And since when did I have the sense to plan ahead beyond five minutes?
“Oh,” Jenny said compliantly. “We can find something in the Sears or Wards Christmas catalogs.”
“Yeah, good idea.” Relieved that she’d completely fallen for my ploy of distraction, I started a conversation about various categories of potential gifts. My aim was to kill as much time as possible for the Amos ‘n’ Andy episode to run its course.
“But who’s gonna pay?” Jenny said.
“I dunno. Mom? We’ll figure it out.”
“Or we could make somethun.”
“Great idea!” I said, stepping back toward the top of the stairs to listen for Amos ‘n’ Andy. It sounded as if the show had moved well beyond a guy wearing an unconvincing Santa suit climbing through an apartment window from a fire escape ladder.
I then led Jenny . . . as slowly as I could . . . down the stairway. By the time we re-entered the living room, the Amos ‘n’ Andy episode was wrapping up. I was immensely relieved that I’d saved Jenny from the truth about Santa Claus. I hoped she would forget all about “planning ahead,” at least as it concerned devising joint Christmas gifts for our older sisters. I did like Jenny’s idea of “making somethun,” though: it would save me allowance money, which I could spend how it was intended to be spent . . . on myself.
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
[1] What I appreciated most about this arrangement was that the big blue Cadillac got parked in our garage, displacing Mother’s embarrassingly old DeSoto—or was it the ’50 Studebaker? My Dad was exceptionally frugal when it came to car ownership. He refused to spend money on a brand new car or take out a car loan. He himself always drove a two- or three-year-old Buick, a hand-me-down car of the wife of one of the judges at the courthouse. The judge, who always had a huge cigar sticking out of the corner of his mouth even when he was talking to you, had a brother who owned a car dealership up in Cambridge, Minnesota. The judge always arranged a “good car deal” for Dad, and Dad, as Clerk of the District Court, always drove a nice, low-mileage car. I was never embarrassed to be seen in it. Mother’s car, however, was a different story. It was always a cheap clunker that Mother “got to choose” from one of the used car lots in town. Since she did the lion’s share of the daily chauffeuring while Dad’s shiny car sat idly in the courthouse parking lot, my sisters and I were more apt to be seen in her car than in Dad’s. I found this plight terribly embarrassing. For that one week of Grandpa’s convention in Chicago, however, I got to pretend that my parents were cool, rich and sensible enough to have two nice cars. Unfortunately, this sentiment worked only with regard to passers-by, since Grandpa’s car never left the garage. Most of my schoolmates (the people who mattered most) lived outside our immediate neighborhood and thus, never saw what was parked in our garage.
