Christmas memories … ‘There’s never two of anything’

Editor’s note:  Anita Paddock’s review of books we should read are scheduled to appear on the second and fourth Friday of each month. Enjoy.

review by Anita Paddock

“Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago.  Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house in a country town.”

So begins my favorite Christmas novella., one which must be read to yourself, preferably in a comfy chair next to a lighted Christmas tree,  and then again aloud, preferably to someone you love. It’s a story I never grow tired of, and it’s one I recommend whole heartedly. In fact, I find great pleasure in introducing those of you who’ve never read it, as well as those who need a gentle reminder, to “A Christmas Memory.”

Truman Capote, wrote this as a young man in New York. First published in “Mademoiselle” magazine in 1956, it is written in present tense, a literary device designed to give the reader an immediate connection to the story. “Imagine a morning…” I’m there, and so are you.

Truman Capote takes you to the scene of his world as a small child in Alabama during the Depression years. Unwanted by both his beautiful mother, Lillie Mae Faulk, who aspired  to be a rich socialite in New York City, and his father, Arch Persons, who liked to squire around rich widows in New Orleans, he was sent to Monroeville to live with his mother’s relatives who occupied a big, rambling house. A cousin of his, Sook, cooked the meals and took care of the house. Simple-minded, or made to feel that way by others, Sook and Truman, whom she called Buddy, became best friends, the way misfits often do.

There is little cash money in the household, so Sook and Buddy scheme all year on ways to make money. They sell tickets to see a three-legged chicken, swat flies for pennies, sell flowers for funerals. They save their money so they can bake Christmas fruitcakes for people who have been nice to them, not necessarily people they know, but those whom they admire. The bus driver on the Mobile run who toots his horn and waves gets a cake. So does the nice couple who was passing through and stopped to take their picture, the only one ever taken of the two of them together. And President and Mrs. Roosevelt get one as well.

They count their money, buy ingredients, including whiskey from a local Indian bootlegger, and proceed to make a batch of 30 fruitcakes to mail off in time for Christmas. They celebrate around the kitchen table with a tiny drink of the whiskey that was left over. Even Queenie, their little terrier, gets some.

They are feeling happy and proud of themselves when other relatives storm into the kitchen and scold Sook for giving whiskey to a little boy. Because the relatives “have power over them and frequently make them cry,” Sook runs to her bed and sobs into her pillow that is “as wet as a widow’s handkerchief.”

“Don’t be sad,” Buddy tells her.

“I’m old. Old and funny.”

“You’re not funny. You’re fun,” Buddy says, “More fun than anybody.”

The next day they walk through briars and creeks to find the perfect Christmas tree. They take Queenie with them, and push a buggy with “wheels that wobble like a drunkard’s legs,” They find the tree and load it into the buggy to transport home. On the way back to town. a rich mill owner’s wife offers to buy their tree. “Give you two bits cash for that old tree,” she says.

Sook shakes her head no. “Why, we wouldn’t take a dollar.”

“Goodness, woman, you can get another old tree,” the rich woman pleads.

“I doubt it. There’s never two of anything.”

They decorate their tree with hand made ornaments and construction paper cats and birds, and with the foil they’ve saved from gum wrappers, they fashion angels and make it sparkle like “a Baptist church window.”

Then they separate and make gifts for each other. Sook wishes she could buy Buddy a bicycle, but she has no money. She makes him a kite instead, like she did the past year and the year before that.

Buddy makes her a kite also, and they wait for Christmas Day to arrive with the coming of practical, disappointing gifts from relatives. They fly their kites together, both perfectly happy with each other and their hand-made gifts, both thinking that this must be what heaven is really like.

Eventually, Truman‘s mother did move to New York City where she sent for her son. She married Joe Capote, and Truman took his last name as his own, although he never really formed much of a relationship with his stepfather. He was sent to a series of boys’ schools, where he did not flourish. He got a job at the New Yorker magazine in the mail room and sent out stories to be published. Many of his early works like “A Christmas Memory” were based on events in his childhood. He achieved fame with his non-fiction novel “In Cold Blood,” a novel he researched with the help of Harper Lee, a childhood friend in Monroeville who did all right for herself with her novel, the Pulitzer prize winner, “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

With his fame as a writer and his eccentric life style, he became what his mother strived for — a member of high society among the New York set. But his personal life was a mess, and he descended into the depths of alcohol and drugs. He died in 1984 at the age of 59.

•••

Bob Hughart, a psychiatric nurse at Vista Health, is as big a fan of Truman Capote as I am. In fact, he reads “A Christmas Memory” at the annual Christmas program held each December at the Miller Branch Library. After his 2009 performance before a large crowd, I asked the Greenwood native and long time resident of Fort Smith what he was currently reading.

“I’m reading “Les Miserables” for about the hundredth time. It’s always a spiritual uplift for me,” he says.

His favorite book as a child was “And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street” by Dr. Seuss and “Make Way for Ducklings.”

He remembers hearing “Charlotte’s Web” broadcast in segments over the radio.

“Of course, I then had to have the book. I loved the illustrations.”

When asked if he enjoys reading now as much as he did as a child, he nods his head yes. “Reading has always meant the world to me. It still does.”

Feedback
Contact Anita at [email protected]