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Christmas Alone
There have been many memories over the years from people who have had to spend Christmas away from their family, either because of weather problems, or health or job…yet from these times come some of our richest memories.
As it happened I spent my first Christmas away from home in Mitchell, South Dakota. I am from Minnesota, and landed my first job at KORN in October of that year…hired over the phone…for the sum of $140 a week.
I was the new guy, so didn’t expect I would get Christmas off—and I didn’t, besides, I didn’t have enough money to travel or buy gifts anyway.
I worked from 6pm to 1am, 6 days a week, and learned the hard way how to pronounce Jim Abouresks name, that Lead is not pronounced Lead, and the department store in Mitchell’s was pronounced Booies, not bouches.
I learned all these lessons, from our most loyal listener- Leta. Mind you, she didn’t have a choice…she was a widow who lived alone in a small house right next to the radio tower- and it overpowered all other signals…(I think you could pick up our station from an aluminum chair behind her house)
Anyway, from 7 to 1, she would frequently call and give me and say “I was listening and happened to notice…” I don’t know if I was grateful for the help, or irritated at the constant reminders of my shortcomings…but at any rate, she was as much a fixture of my new job as anyone else, even though I never met her.
As the first weeks of my job unfolded, I would spend my of my work shift alone, and had time to contemplate a grim, lonely holiday without friends or family.
Oh, I was asked by fellow workers to come over for a Christmas meal, but felt determined that no one would ruin my bad mood.
Finally, it was Christmas Eve…I signed off the station at 12 midnight, and said Merry Christmas without meaning it. Sure enough the phone rang—and it was Leta “Sounds like you might be spending Christmas alone.” “yeah,”( at least she wasn’t correcting mistakes from my newscast) “Well, I know what that’s like…and we said good bye and she hung up.
And I sat there alone for a minute for once thinking of someone besides myself.
I finished up my work at the station, hopped in my beat up Oldsmobile and drove to the only place that was open.. a 7-11. I had 3 dollars. I bought a can of cashews, and dug around in my trunk and found a beat up yellow bow. I had never been to her house, but even I could find the radio station tower…I found a small little house next to it with a light on in the kitchen.
I walked slowly up an unshoveled path, watching my breath freeze in the cold night air…thinking of a million reasons why this was a dumb idea.
I knocked on the door. The seconds crawled by…just as I turned to leave…the door opened a crack, and small frail woman with snow white hair said…”yes?”
“Um, my name is Jeff, and I work at the radio…I thrust out the can of cashews. “Merry Christmas” She opened the door wider and stared the Cashews then up at me…a 23 year old kid in a beat up jacket.
Suddenly she threw the door she smiled, a brilliant joyous smile and said “You came! You came—thank God Almighty, you came!”
And so, the two of sat in her tiny little kitchen in the wee hours of the morning, eating cashews, laughing and telling stories
and we had a very Merry Christmas
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