Rudolph Tie and Bow Tie o’ the Day are pleased to present the body thong an anonymous gift-giver sent me last year. Y’all are so good to me, and you know me so well. I’ve got to go to the deli this morning, and I’m so hoping I forget to take off the red-nosed thong before I go. It would be wrong of me to wear it to the grocery store intentionally. That’s over-the-top. But to “accidentally” give my fellow shoppers a show…that’s not inappropriate at all. I am free entertainment at Dick’s Market. Suzanne says I should sell tickets. 🤡 🎡 🎄 🦌
I rarely heard my dad use profanity around the family. The swear-y word I recall hearing him say on occasion was “balls.” It always made me laugh. I’ve never heard anyone else use it as a “swear.” These 9 Ties and 4 Bow Ties o’ the Day are for Dad. I’m missing him extra bunches today for some reason, and so I’m wearing my striped overalls—as was daily his custom.
There is a Christmas story that lives in my family lore, which I have heard many times, from many of the actual participants. I have never heard the story told the same way twice, by anyone who was present when it came to pass. I had not yet been born when the event occurred, so I am only figuring as to the “truth” of what happened. I have listened to all the versions of the story, and this is what I have settled on. The gist is true. Some details may or may not be. But this is how the story sits in my as-told-to mind.
Mom wanted a flocked Christmas tree one year, probably sometime in the late-50’s. Dad invoked his belief in the principle of “happy wife, happy life”—and swiftly brought home, not just a Christmas tree, but some flock-goo and a hand-pump flocking gadget. With the bare tree on the sidewalk, just off the front porch, Dad began to spray flock onto its branches.
Mom watched. The kids watched. I’m sure Lyman’s peered out their windows from across the street to watch. Let me just say this: This was back before any real tree-flocking technology had been perfected to even the teensiest degree. The gooey flock kept getting gummed up in the pump. As Dad pumped the gadget, the flocking spit at the tree in streaks and glops and splotches. This was not the pretty tree Mom or Dad had envisioned.
Dad’s patience with the project was thinning. And even as Mom could see it unfolding, she was powerless to stop the inevitable. The frigid air on the entire street was getting prickly, as Dad became—how shall I say it—”vocal” about the clogged flocking gadget. At some point, Momo even emerged from her house next door to ours, to investigate the ensuing holiday hullabaloo in our front yard. As the anticipating crowd grew, so did Dad’s irritability. Dad said some bigly bad words as he tried to complete his flocking mission. I am fairly certain, based on the many retellings of the story, the bigly bad f-word finally flew out of Dad’s mouth at some point. And I don’t mean the word “flock.” I heard that Momo scurried back to her house to find Popo. Mom made sure my siblings made a bee-line into our house.
I am sure Mom and Dad had a brief, tense two-person family meeting out there in the cold, after which Dad likely went coyote hunting for a couple of hours to re-set his blood pressure, and to think of how to make proper apologies to his mother—and to mine.
How did this story end? I have heard that my dad finally managed to passably complete the flocking o’ the tree, and all was made right with the world. (I highly doubt that version.) I have also heard that my parents used the tree in its as-was imperfection. (I don’t think that is believable either.) In the most Ron-and-Helen-Wright-esque version of the story I can imagine, after Dad took off in his truck, Mom dragged the half-flocked pine behind the house and set it on fire—and later, Dad showed up with a freshly cut, naked, better-than-the-first-one X-mas tree. Now, that’s the kind of home I was born into, give or take a fact or two—and I’m proud of it.
I’m sure Skitter has learned it from me. She likes to mix her holidays into a Mulligan Stew of celebration. Here she is, wearing her McDonald’s French fries Halloween costume and a Christmas tree Tie o’ the Day. You might have noticed that many of Skitter’s X-mas ties have been made with their print patterns upside down. I suppose that is the reason I was able to procure her a bulk batch of thirty or so doggie neckties for the enormous cost of $9.95 on amazon.
In the second photo, you can see Skitter later fell asleep on her bed on the couch last night, surrounded by two of her blankets and covered in 9 of my jolly Bow Ties o’ the Evening. I guess, sometimes bow ties feel warmer than fleece blankets. At least, according to Skitter.
Yes, it’s the annual Charlie Brown Tree o’ HO’s! It is the largest of our three Chuck Brown holiday trees, and it plays the Charlie Brown theme song. My seven “ho, ho,ho” Ties o’ the Day always accompany me when I pull this tree off the garage shelf, dust it off, and arrange the HO’s just so.
BTW If you haven’t already seen them, don’t forget to stream old COPS episodes of their annual “HO, HO, HO” Christmas episodes, featuring undercover ho arrests.
Here are two of my Chuck Brown X-mas trees, including the tiniest. Stay tuned to see the third Chuck Brown tree in this afternoon’s post. If you’ve been a longtime reader, you probably know what’s coming.
I like that TIE O’ THE DAY has been around long enough to have post topics people expect to see annually. My grandma’s early-70’s homemade milkweed pod Christmas ornament is one such holiday topic. It is a crafty artifact worth taking a moment to gaze upon. It’s a clever use for a milkweed pod, and it also shows off my beautiful grandmother, Zola Walker Wright—who our family has always called Momo (pronounced Mom’-o). I usually display the ornament with my “Santa, Baby” Ties o’ the Day, because Momo was a looker.
Momo was an elegant, well-spoken woman of manners and culture. She belonged to book clubs and garden clubs and whatever fine arts clubs existed in town. Despite her grace, she could not spell, and my dad’s lack of spelling ability came directly from her genes, I’m sure. They spelled words wrong, the same way.
Since we lived next door to Momo and Popo, I was the recipient of many Momo confections. She could bake up a storm, and I was a willing guinea pig for new recipes she tried out. But my fondest childhood memory of Momo is of her washing my hair every Sunday morning in her kitchen sink, to help out Mom while she got my siblings ready for church. Momo or Popo would lift me onto the kitchen counter, where I would lie down on a towel, with my head over the sink’s edge. Momo washed my hair with her sink sprayer. It felt exotic to me. She then towel-dried and combed out my hair and sent me off towards home where someone would assist me in getting into my church clothes.
I can still feel the kitchen counter, straight, beneath my stretched out kid’s body. I can feel the strangeness of lying there. And I can still feel the warmth of the water through my hair, the sting of shampoo in my eyes when I got too fidgety. I recall feeling entirely safe and loved and cared for as I lay on my back on the kitchen counter with my head over the sink. I felt wonderful because I knew this was something extra I got from my grandparents, simply because I lived next door and was the baby of my family.Thirty years later, when I bought my grandparents’ home, I repainted the kitchen and had the kitchen flooring replaced. The sink and the kitchen counters needed to be replaced, but I could not bring myself to do it. That was the Sunday morning hair-washing sink of my early childhood. That was “my” kitchen counter. I didn’t want them to be different than they had always been. When I sold the house in 2017, saying goodbye to the beat up sink and counter top was the hardest part of leaving the house for the last time.
I was thinking about how Santa spends his downtime. Of course, I went to the Tie Room to do research. Bow Tie o’ the Day tells me Santa likes to ice skate. The six Ties o’ the Day give evidence that Santa enjoys playing football with his reindeer, golfing in his sleigh, snow skiing, and snowboarding. But when Santa’s done playing, he checks Facebook to find how many friend requests he’s got—WHOA! That’s when he knows it’s time to get himself and his reindeer into tip-top shape for their bigly night. Sounds about right, to me.
I don’t know if the dude on my ugly sweater is supposed to be Santa, an elf, or a gnome. It looks most like a gnome to me. It’s probably a gnome-elf. Gnomes celebrate Christmas too, I’m sure. Ugly sweaters Bow Tie o’ the Day pairs nicely with ugly sweaters Tie o’ the Day. This is not the ugliest Christmas sweater I’ve ever owned, but I readily admit it ain’t purty. I think I’m dressed perfectly for putting together an ugly sweaters puzzle with Suzanne. Puzzling has been the highlight of this under-adventurous pandemic weekend. Always dress the part, I say, even if there’s not a crowd there to see how garishly cool you look.🎄
I decided to honor Dad—master hunter o’ all critters—by displaying six of my reindeer Christmas Ties o’ the Day, but I chose to actually wear the tie showing Santa and a reindeer fishing for Santa-hatted green fish. I got to go deer hunting with Dad on opening day long before I was old enough to do the required trekking. For the first few years I accompanied him and my brothers on opening day, I tuckered out early and ended up riding on Dad’s shoulders for most of the day’s hunt. I can still see the view of various mountain ranges from atop Dad’s shoulders, and I distinctly recall once laying my head on his head and falling asleep on his shoulders while he walked to find a deer he had shot.
As for fishing with Dad, I have vivid memories of packing up the camper he built himself to house us on camping trips. I recall driving with Dad and his dad, Popo, to lakes to fish, always intending to stay overnight. I recall that I always asked Dad or Popo to put the worm on my hook. I recall catching the fish, cooking the fish, and eating the fish that we cooked over the campfire. But I do not recall ever leaving a lake or driving home after a fishing adventure. Magically, I always fell asleep in the camper at the end of a day o’ fishing, and opened the camper door the next morning to find the camper was parked on our own front lawn, right outside the picture window. I recall always fussing at Dad at the breakfast table for not letting us stay overnight at the lake. Dad had to be away so often to work his bees that he really, really, really liked to sleep in his own bed whenever he could. He always said he couldn’t sleep well without his personal mattress and his personal pillow. Honestly, I think it was Mom he couldn’t sleep well without. Miss you, Dad.
Today marks 13 years since Dad left us to go to The Painless Place. I still miss kissing his bald head. The coyotes he loved to hunt continue to howl in the raw cold of dawn. The bees are dancing their various jigs in their winter playgrounds. And we’re all still down here just holding up the sky, and missing the old man who taught us how to work with joy, and how to love each other with laughter.
This pic of my beekeeper dad was snapped long before I was born. I’ve titled it, ST. RON OF THE BEES. I don’t remember what I was being punished for as a wee kid once, but Dad kicked my butt with his work boots. He did it so softly that only my pride felt it.
