Christmas 2017

Thinking about Christmas and being alone this year I am reminded about Christmas 1963 through 1967 and again in 1972 when I was overseas. I do not remember any Christmas trees or decorations at sea or ashore. The navy was, I suppose, not wanting to make sailors any more homesick than they already were. There was a turkey dinner, but it was never like a home cooked dinner. Christmas of 1968 was our first Christmas together after 4 years of marriage. I remember Joyce went to Millington Tennessee and brought a huge Christmas tree and brought it home in the rain. Getting it in the door was a challenge and it was filled with water on all the branches making the floor and carpet all wet. After Christmas the branches had dried and we had to cut the lower ones off to shove it out the door. There were so many needles that flew in every direction as we pushed it out the door, we were still vacuuming them up into the next summer. The real Christmas will be when Joyce gets to come home. There have been many times in the last 9 weeks when I had my doubts that she would ever be home again and on the first day the doctors in emergency did not think she would live through the night. Now we are thinking about being home “Together Again” , this was one of my favorite Buck Owens songs from the sixties. I used to sit in bars overseas drinking my beer and feeding the jukebox to listen to this song.