Friday, December 02, 2005

CHRISTMAS 2005 Part One

A local food chain wanted to do something special for Christmas. Or the holiday season, to be more PC. (Sorry, to me it will always be CHRISTMAS. You can keep Kwanza or June Teenth or Festivus or whatever you want and enjoy that all for celebratin' self... it's CHRISTMAS to me. No shame in it. It's okay with Hallmark. Blame it and everything else on my parents. Mr. Shegog, the next door neighbor, pretended to be Santa. I believed. To this day, whenever I smell felt - the green on my Lionel train board that went under the tree... or see a sparkle - the twinkling lights and reflective wondrous ornaments... or hear really good cursing - my dad putting up the tree on the train board and getting a shock or two from the lights, while I was tucked away in bed with visions of CHRISTMAS, I think of Santa, Bethlehem, Stocking hung with care, wrapping paper, pine smell and my lost innocence.

Where was I?

The food chain wanted to do something special. They put up an ice skating rink on their roof. It's about 40 x 60. Saturday it will be 84 degrees here. Guess where all the TV stations will do their remote shot?

I once staged a snow storm on the hottest day of a hot spell in Montreal... it was in the 90s (before metrification, thank you.) We got coverage in 5 of the then 6 daily papers. Front page on 4, full front page on one (in color!) Local and network news (twice.) This was for the radio station for which I worked.

Years later I wanted to get my morning show to drive a refrigerated truck full of snow 'for the children' somewhere south... but couldn't arrange.

Know what? I can't get into the Christmas spirit... can't drag the tree out of hiding yet. Must be the weather. Or the lack of REAL cold. Displaced in time and space, that's me!

I give Terri credit for the joke below. I chuckle everytime I see it or think about it.

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