Although in most of the things I write about Christmas I am turning the focus away from the presents received and toward the Christian heart of the seasonal festival, one Christmas in particular stands out in my memory because of what I received for Christmas. That was the Christmas of 1946.
I was 6 years old, going on 7. I had started to first grade at Pea Ridge in the fall of the year, a part of the class taught by Miss Louise Easley, who was soon to become Mrs. Harold Beard. I remember that she had all of us make a tea towel for our Moms. I can't recall what the design was on the towel, but the cloth came with a marked out design, and we would use colored thread to make the design stand out. Then we would finish the project by sewing all around the edges. My sewing wasn't very straight, but the tea towel got a smile from my Mom, and that tea towel was used at our house for a long time after that.
The Christmas of 1946 was the first Christmas I had ever known outside of war time. World War II was over, and the lean years of ration stamps for buying scarce goods was going away. That Christmas, I got a really major Christmas gift. That is, my brother Ben and I got a really major Christmas gift. We got our first bicycle for Christmas. That's two brothers, and one bike; so it was "our" bicycle. Still, even though it might have been nice to each have a bike, we nevertheless thought it was pretty grand. Our old trikes were well used by that time. We each had had a tricycle, and we had worn out the tires several times on them. In those days we didn't usually throw things away just because some part wore out, we replaced the worn out tires with pieces of garden hose held onto the wheel by a strand of wire around the inside. It wasn't great, but it worked, and I'm pretty sure we had at least a hundred thousand miles on those old trikes.
Our new bike was like a new day in our lives. Some days are pretty special for boys because they are signs that we are not little boys anymore. I remember a few years ago being out shooting baskets with my young nephew. He had just become able to loft the basketball up over the rim. So he was not a little boy anymore, he was a big boy and could really shoot baskets now. So for Ben and me, to graduate from our old trikes to our new bike was like becoming big boys now. It was actually a big boys' bike, a 26-inch full-sized bike, really too much bike for us at 7- and 5-years-old.
Even though we got the bike for Christmas, it would be several months before we could really learn to ride it. But that didn't stop us from using it, and trying to ride. Our lawn was sloping from front to back, and Ben discovered that he could take the bike up to the high part, then stand on the left pedal and ride the bike downhill. He was too short to mount the seat, but he could balance the bike by standing on the left pedal. I soon learned to coast that way, too. The main problem was that you couldn't apply the brakes. Luckily, at the lower part of the lawn stood our little brooder house. Crashing into the brooder house effectively stopped our downhill progress. I guess we were lucky that we weren't going really fast, so we didn't get hurt by stopping that way.
In the summer of 1947, we made a vacation trip to Los Angeles, Calif., to visit our uncles and their families. Our Dad's two brothers both lived in Los Angeles at the time, and both worked for North American Airlines. Uncle Earl Nichols had two boys older than I, Marvin and Bud, and a younger cousin Larry, who was between my age and Ben's age. Uncle Gene had two daughters, Barbara, who was about my age, and Norma, who was two or three years younger. When we first arrived at Uncle Earl and Aunt Sybil's house, my cousin Bud determined that he was going to teach me to ride a bike. He would get me on his bike, push me along and then give me a shove to coast for a short way. Before long, Bud had me riding and pedaling and steering and going along pretty well. When we were at Uncle Gene and Aunt Evelyn's house, they let me ride Barbara's bike. The only thing was, every day about 4:30, one of the neighbors would come home from work and park his car along the street in front of his house. At the time I hadn't learned to look ahead beyond my front tire, so every day I bumped into that neighbor's car's front bumper; which meant that the bike got put up and I had to go sit quietly on the couch for awhile.
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Editor's note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Editorial on 12/24/2014