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A Christmas Story From 1965
I didn’t have many friends in high school. Due to my course of study, I was enrolled in the central school district while I lived in a northern school district. All of my neighborhood buddies and my own two sisters went to a different high school.
One friend I did have from my high school was named was Curtis. We decided that a sleepover might be a cool thing so our plan was that Curtis would ride home with me first then the next week I would ride the bus home and stay with him. The only problem was that my living situation was unusual. My parents loved me, but our family didn’t have a lot of money. My dad bought a 2 bedroom 1 bath house that had a 3 car detached garage. My sisters lived in one bedroom and my parents took the other one.
That left one corner of the garage for me. This structure had a stucco exterior and bare stud walls with tarpaper. There was a one-piece 16-foot garage door. My dad loved, collected and restored antique cars and trucks. What better place to store fenders and other body parts than on an open garage door 7’ x 16’. It made a perfect shelf. The door was open from the day we moved in until long after I moved out. The barrier separating my space from the rest of the garage was a haphazard stack of boxes that you could easily see over. Think of a building having three walls with one side permanently open summer, winter, spring and fall. I did have a small desk fan because in the summer the daytime temperatures were between 100 and 110 for about 4 months out of the year. That meant that I slept with a sheet over my head to keep the bugs and blowing sand away. That is where I did my homework after school before bedtime.
The winters in central California were fairly mild and a nice blanket and bedspread were plenty. I did have a small space heater for homework time, but it was too expensive to leave on at night. And Curtis was coming. As embarrassed as I was my Mom had OK’d the visit and I was determined to press on and keep up my end of the bargain. I could only hope that Curtis wouldn’t hold my situation against me. The day came and Curtis didn’t even seem to notice my unusual surroundings, he just seemed happy to visit and enjoy a meal my mom had made just for us.
And then it was my turn to visit Curtis. I could hardly wait to get on the bus with my friend, Curtis. His stop was last on the route and it seemed like we rode for an hour. We stopped by the side of the road with nothing but cornfields as far as you could see and got off the bus. We walked for about a half-mile straight into one of the cornfields and finally arrived at his house. I had never seen a house like that except in the movies depicting life during the great dust bowl and the grapes of wrath movies. This house had not been painted since before the civil war and you could see holes in the roof as we approached. My best friend, Curtis, was the oldest of 13 children and his mother looked exactly like Ma Kettle, dad was a severe alcoholic.
As we went inside I was struck that there was nothing on the walls; no stucco, no sheetrock only cardboard nailed around what was the single bath and toilet area. Everything else was bare studs and the back of the exterior board siding. There was a single incandescent light bulb hanging from the roof in the middle of the room, there was no ceiling. The floors were rough sawn boards and looked to be the underlayment to the original house. In many places, you could see the ground beneath. It became obvious immediately that Curtis had not told his mother I was coming for a sleepover; I could tell from the horrific argument which erupted when I walked in. Long-suffering and quick to adjust, his mom sent Curtis and me to the corner store for one more pound of hamburger meat.
They didn’t have a car that I could see and it wouldn’t have made a difference anyway. The corner store was 2 miles away and was little more than a small country store with a single gas pump. I’ll always remember the magnificent dinner that followed. His mom made a big platter of very small hamburger patties, fried potatoes and the best pinto beans I’ve ever eaten. I was careful not to take too much as there were literally 15 other mouths to feed besides mine. Curtis and I bedded down on a sleeping bag on the floor and I felt like the luckiest boy in all of California.
It turns out that I was Curtis’s rich friend after all and he was glad I didn’t hold his situation against him. Our friendship endured for the remainder of high school. We both graduated then went our separate ways and eventually lost touch. I’ll always treasure my sleepover with Curtis and the lessons he taught me that December day so very many years ago. Thank you Curtis. Regardless of your situation, you just might be someone’s rich friend too. Remember that wherever you go there you are.
No scripture this time, this is a real story.
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