If you have read my stories for awhile you should remember the one about the Bill in the Mail. It was about my dad sending my Grandmother a bogus bill every now again when he managed the T. M. Deal lumberyard in Medicine Lodge.
Grandmother hated getting a bill in the mail. She always paid cash for everything she bought. But she knew that Grandfather would go to the lumberyard to buy some lumber or nails etc. It made her mad that he wouldn’t pay for it when he bought it. He actually had paid for his stuff when he got it but never told Grandmother that he had.
Daddy knew how she was about getting a bill in the mail and he would send a bogus bill every so often just to get her going. (That and putting my dress on backwards when he took me to spend the day with her so mom could sleep after working all night as the operator at the phone company.)
My dress on backwards always had Grandmother mumbling under her breath while she took off the dress and put it on me right. I am sure that my dad’s little chuckle as he went out the door when he dropped me off made her even madder.
When we lived in Mullinville and my dad was running the TM Deal lumberyard we had an IGA store run by daddy’s friend Jim Hardesty. They were both on the city council and were in charge of getting the candy for the little brown paper sacks ready that each student received after the Christmas program every year.
Every year at the IGA there would be at least 6 large boxes of Christmas candy lined up in the store near the cash registers. My dad would go over there about once a day on his coffee break and get a handful of the candy.
Daddy thought it was funny to just put some in his pockets and leave the store. But Jim always saw him getting a piece of candy out of each of the boxes. He would yell at my dad about taking the candy and daddy would just chuckle and run out the door.
Daddy and Jim were good friends and were in card club together and this was just a running joke that my dad liked to do. He knew after Christmas that Jim would get even with him. I hate to think what either one of them would have done to me if I had been the one taking candy from the store without paying for it.
So in January there would be a bill arrive in the mail from the IGA store for a grazing fee. It was a bill for Christmas candy that daddy had walked out of the store with. I never saw the bill and I am pretty sure it was not what the candy was actually worth but it would arrive for whatever amount that Jim thought he had stuck in his pockets. Dad would laugh about it and go back over to the store and pay his bill for Christmas candy.
I have wondered how much candy he ate when he was there filling the little brown paper bags with candy for the kids at the Christmas program. Along with the candy there was always an orange and some nuts in the shells in each bag for each kid in school.
The brown paper bags would be twisted shut and placed in a box to hand out after the program. The kids always looked forward to getting the little brown paper bag of candy after the program. It was the signal that Christmas was close. It was always a time to trade candy with the other kids to get just what you liked.
The Christmas program was always on the evening of the last day of school in December. Along with the bag of candy every student received we also had a visit from Santa. Santa handed out the sacks of candy. One of the men in the city council always played Santa to hand out the sacks.
I don’t think the students over the years ever figured out that it was one of our dads who were playing Santa. As an adult I’ve thought about how naïve we were to not notice the shoes or the voice of the one that was Santa. Now that I think about it, I would have definitely known my dads dress shoes. But as kids we didn’t think about checking that out.
Dad’s bill in the mail always made me think of my Grandmother and the bills my dad sent to her that made her Irish temper flare. She couldn’t wait until he came to get me to let him know what she thought about the bill and he would just laugh and escort me out the door. Dad’s bill for candy grazing is one of my favorite Christmas memories. To contact Sandy: [email protected]
