Christmas in Crawdad Holler

My nephew and myself lay there in the bed as quiet as mice wishing that twelve o'clock midnight would hurry up and get here so we could fly down the stairs and open our presents. The reason we were quiet had absolutely nothing to do with sleep instead it was all about the investigation. We strained our ears, sifting through all the hustle and bustle of the adults down stairs getting everything set up for the big event.

There were five very nervous children in that tiny house in crawdad holler, my nephew and myself were in bed in one of the two rooms upstairs, my younger sister and niece were in bed downstairs directly below us, which was easy enough to tell since they were continually giggling and only stopping to jabber a few words, there was only 3 years separating our ages, so we were all on the same excitement level when it came to christmas. My evil older brother slept in the other bedroom upstairs, but of course he had to act much less excited about this night than we did so he could make fun of us later on.

Even though were a very poor family that by no means hampered the excitement of the day, in the back of all our growing minds we knew that there were at least 5 new things under the tree waiting on us, and it did not matter that all five things together most likely did not cost more than twenty dollars, it was the fact that they were NEW. We also Knew these things would only start this wonderful event because our parents made sure, somehow that each child had at least one NEW present. They would then add presents that were a different kind of NEW, because they were masters at taking old or junk things and turning them into wonderful and exciting presents. The magic of Christmas for the five of us at the time was how our parents only gained this ability during holidays and birthdays.

  We heard dad coming toward the bottom of the stairs and although we knew the ritual well we still had to play our parts, dad would always do a few "fake yells" and although we were sure this would happen we could not resist jumping to our feet and racing toward the stairs arriving at the first step only to hear dad at the bottom saying "AH - HA -, caught ya, it ain't time to open presents yet,  I was just checking to see if you all were sleeping like you were supposed to be,you know the rules,no sleep, no presents" ,

WE would slowly make our way back to the bed, all the while knowing that just before we reach the bed....Dad would yell.."well since you are already up I guess......." and that was all he was able to say before he was overwhelmed with kids,

I think this was the favorite part of my fathers Christmas, the honor of being the ONLY one to wake up the children. As the presents were being passed out by my older sister, my mother would go from one child to the other asking questions, acting surprised wehn she was shown this or that, all the while knowing what each one was getting.

My mother and father always made room around themselves during this time, for all the kisses, hugs and thank yous. We were the only residents in this long hollow and the house we lived in was weather torn and without a lot of the things I now take for granted such as a telephone, bathroom or running water. But this little house was host to the best Christmas's I can remember.