It hangs on the tree every year. It has hung on one Christmas Tree or another every Christmas since 1973. That is a long time. My 50th year has been a good time in 2018. On occasion I may get a bet wistful when I think about something that I have been looking at without fail for 45 Christmas seasons.
This stocking has stood the test of time better than I have. It looks the same as it did when my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Bridges, called me up to her desk to present this to me and tell me Merry Christmas. It was a Christmas gift that has kept on giving. She gave one to each member of our morning class and one to each of her afternoon students. This was when we went to kindergarten for half a day. I am sure that was enough, given the “all boy” report she once gave to my mother. Mrs. Bridges was being kind. She probably meant “all pain in the butt”.
I wonder how many of my classmates over the years have held tight to this awesome and giving act of kindness and love for her students? I hope there are some other than me. There should be.
Nary a Christmas goes by that I don’t look at this stocking with my my name on it. I am taken back to Brownstown Elementary School. My kindergarten class was the first class to go to the “new building” for all six years K-5. It was a wonderful place filled with kind and loving souls. Patty Hall and Sue Sommers in the office. Mr. Spurgeon was our principal and we respected the heck out of him and his ability to swing a paddle. Our teachers were wonderful. It was part of an idyllic childhood I was blessed with, one that I wish every kid could experience. None of that has left me.
This past week I spoke on the phone with an old friend from Brownstown. We were talking school stuff. Our speaks did get off course for a moment or two and we laughed and took pause when we talked about old days.
Though I did not mention in it in the context of our speaks, we went to church together all those years ago, I thought about old Noble Foster as I spoke to my friend. Noble was a great man. He was a deacon of the church. If he saw you in the hallway or the foyer, and you looked for him, he’d give you a wink and a handshake. The wink was priceless from that skinny wrinkled face with eyes that twinkled like none I have seen since. The handshake offered a peppermint or two similar to the ones in the photo above, sans the store advertisement.
It did not take long for these little candies to be referred to as “Deacon Cigars”.
A decade later in hallway or a classroom at North Harrison High School in Ramsey, where I relocated, it was not uncommon for this question to be asked by someone I knew.
“Anybody got any Deacon Cigars?”
The legend lives on. Not long ago I was having speaks with a guy a couple years my senior, and he brought up the Deacon Cigars. “Johnson”, he said, “You changed the candy landscape with those Deacons back then.”
“No, that happened an even longer time ago,” I said. Then I turned my head sideways and said, “Let me tell you a story about an old guy I went to church with…”
Oh my. Precious memories. How they linger.
Speaking the rights…
Danny Johnson