My Favorite Christmas Memory...

Christmas Eve at the Shop

There are certain smells that I associate with Christmas.  I like the smells of ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, hot cider, pumpkin pie (the real kind...with chunks), cedar trees...these all have a niche in my "Christmas Olfactory Databank."  One smell though, above the rest, takes me back to a certain Christmas Eve...

Dad built the shop at the Homeplace before we even built the house.  Foster Drilling had drilled us a well and in the summer of 1976, Dad, Popo and his crew and us boys built a twenty-four by forty, wood frame, metal sided, concrete floored building, forever after known as "The Shop".

The only picture I could find of "The Shop" was of the back or south side (with the lean-to we added in later years.)  If you look closely, you can see a stove-pipe sticking out of the roof (this was also added in later years!)

And..."The Shop" had a distinctive smell.  In recent years, I have walked into a welding shop, a machine shop or even an old auto parts store and caught a vague whiff of "The Shop."  It's a mixture of gasoline, used oil, paint thinner, paint, welding slag, old tractors, brush killer, oil dry and hundreds of other unidentified odors. Our shop had a large "garage" type door and a smaller entrance door that faced the north.  There was a large concrete "apron" that sloped out from the big door and a concrete stoop at the small door with a little sidewalk that connected the two.  When you stepped into the little door, on your left was shelves with all kinds of paint, hand tools, power tools, chains, big wrenches and sundry other items.  On your right was about the same and farther in was a large workbench with a pegboard back holding more tools.  When you walked farther in and around the shelves to the left, this was the work area with the trash barrel, welder, cutting torch and other larger tools.

On this particular Christmas Eve, we were working inside the shop, on goodness knows what, with the doors closed to keep the cold out (you will notice the description above does not include a heating stove).  Working on Christmas Eve??  Yes...When his two boys were off work or out of school, Leamon Riggs saw this as an opportunity to work out some room and board!  Looking back, it was very astute of him; it kept us close to home where he could keep an eye on us and we learned invaluable lessons to boot!  As we worked through the morning, every now and again, Mom would show up at the door in her old chore coat and head scarf with a fresh pot of coffee to warm us up a bit.  And...about lunch time she called down to us through our little intercom system that lunch was ready.  We worked through the rest of the day, with a few more coffee breaks and finally Dad said "Well...that's enough for today."  We put away what tools we could, swept up the work area, shut off the lights and went to the house.

So...What made this day my favorite Christmas memory?  I didn't mention everything that was on the shelf to the right, as you walked in the smaller door into the shop.  On the next to the top shelf, beside the workbench, was the radio.  What is a shop without a radio?  Ours was an old plastic, box type radio of the Motorola or Zenith brand.  It didn't have the FM band (or at least we didn't use it) so it was permanently set to KWPM-AM, West Plains, Missouri!  Now the antenna had long since been broken off so what to use for a replacement?...That staple of every well supplied Ozark toolbox...baling wire! (or to use the more correct term...balin' waar!)  The on/off switch was the plug-in...plug-in-on and unplug-off.  The volume could be adjusted but it took a screwdriver to do it.

A radio something like this one....

All day long on this beat up old radio, KWPM played Christmas music...all of the old classics by Frank, Dean, Gene, Brenda, Bing, Mel, Perry, The Andrews Sisters, Elvis and of course...the Chipmunks!  There were brief interruptions for the seven-thirty news (and the Semper Fidelis march) and the Noon News (and the Washington Post march).  I don't remember any of our conversations or even what we were working on...But I do remember the music.  I don't think our day of Pandora, XM Radio and ipods could produce the memories that I have of that cold Christmas Eve day.  And there is just something about spending time with family, even if you're working, that is a comfort all in itself...