Checking social media yesterday and today, I noted that very
few had anything negative to say about it; most everyone took the limitations
in stride and did the best they could. I
saw many happy faces, and that’s a good thing.
This was certainly not our worse Christmas. There were many others that linger as
memories best forgotten. In our first
ten years of marriage our families were not large but they were all in Michigan
and all grandparents were still living, meaning that there were “command
performances” every holiday and you were expected to put in an appearance at
every event and this means eating, too.
So yes, that means a holiday meal AT EVERY LOCATION. If you ever saw the movie “Four Christmases”
you get the idea what we went through, though to be honest Thanksgiving was
worse because this meant four big meals IN ONE DAY. We were able to spread Christmas over two
days (Christmas Eve and Christmas).
But that wasn’t the worst.
When we moved out west in 1985, we were separated from
family for the holidays for the first time ever; in this way we actually became
pioneers as everyone else (except my brother) ventured from Michigan
eventually. This meant we were dependent
on shipping gifts via USPS and UPS (we weren’t so lazy that we had to rely on
FedEx for overnight shipping), and whatever long-distance services we had at
whatever location we were living at at the time. I think Mona’s folks came to see us once when
we lived in Boise, and my parents came to Louisiana one year (on their way to
New Orleans for a UM bowl game), and there was one year we went back over the
holidays which taught us never to travel by air during the holidays.
But that wasn’t the worst.
No, the worst Christmas was twenty years ago, in December
2000, as we started our new (and grandest) adventure – moving from Boise to
Seaside, Oregon to take over an ice cream and candy parlor.
Christmas was on a Monday.
We spent the entire weekend before Christmas packing everything up and
then loading it into a big U-Haul truck on Christmas Day. And I mean EVERYTHING. We cooked dinner (warmed up leftovers from
Chinese the night before) on a camp stove and slept in our sleeping bags on the
floor. On Tuesday, breakfast was
something cold (cereal, probably) and coffee from the camp stove, then we
hooked up the car trailer, loaded one of our two cars onto the trailer, and
took the other car to the Title Company to sign away the house we sold a month
before. Coming back to the now-empty
house, we loaded the rest of everything and our suitcases...and our three
dogs…into the car, and we took off for Seaside (well, one dog wanted to
ride with me in the truck, so Mona and the two bigger dogs rode in the
Corolla).
Through rain and wind (especially going through the Coastal
Range where for the first time we experienced the phenomenon of rain and fog…at
the same time), we drove on. Nearly
eleven hours later we made it to Seaside and our first home – the local Comfort
Inn where we booked a room for the five of us.
The only memorable event at the hotel was Heidi (alpha dog) learning
that the toilet is NOT a water dish.
On Wednesday, we headed for the bank to sign for the loan to
buy the business. On Thursday we headed
back to the bank to sign for the loan to buy a house (one we picked out after
looking a month earlier for all of four hours).
Then to the Title Company there to sign, and finally, on Friday, we
could move into the house.
We spent the next three weeks cleaning and fixing up the
shop and converting it into “Zinger’s Ice Cream Parlor and Sweets” (we didn’t
make our own ice cream at first…that came later, when things really went to
shit). It’s a tale I’ve told many times
though never on this blog.
Short version is that sales weren’t what we expected given
the shop’s track record, plus there was more competition in town every year we
operated the shop, and in 2003 we had our worst year ever by far…and learned
TWO MORE SHOPS were planning to open in 2004.
What to do? Because we also had
issues all summer with our ice cream supplier (Tillamook), we though that one
way we could (a) stand out from the crowd and (b) eliminate those issues was to
make our own. That meant going back to
the bank for more money (and we were close to paying off the original loan) and
even more work for us (we had to re-reconfigure the shop to accommodate the ice
cream making equipment). THAT’S even a
longer story, but as you might have guessed, it turned out well. We ran “Zinger’s Homemade Ice Cream” until
selling it in Fall, 2018.
In those ice cream years some Christmases were pretty good,
some not so, but none can compare to the one we spent as domestic stevedores
sleeping on the floor of an empty house.
And certainly 2020, while challenging, was no 2000.
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