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Copyrights reserved by the author. If you are in doubt, please click on 'Copyrights' and read the details. It's almost Christmas by Don Fraser As I sit here looking out of my window, I think of years gone by, when times were simple. The snow is on the ground and it seems colder than it used to be. When you are young, the cold doesn't seem to penetrate your skin so much but when you get old you wrap a blanket around your shoulders and wear a sweater, just to stay warm. Your blood doesn't seem to flow like it did, when you were young. I am sitting here remembering the Christmases gone by. I would get on the streetcar and go downtown. I liked to go after dark, it was then that I could see all of the Christmas-tree lights, shining from people's front windows, I was amazed that people had such imagination. In those years there were no freeways; you rode down the city streets. As you rode the streetcar, you knew it was almost Christmas. It was Depression in America and you wondered how people could afford to pay their electric bill: shining so many lights. Some had candles lit in their windows; some of the Chrismas trees were not lighted. People would put stuffed animals under the trees. As the streetcar went rumbling along, the wheels seemed to sing, "it's Christmas season, it's Christmas season". When the streetcar got downtown I saw the magic of Christmas full-blown. Stores had Christmas music coming out of loudspeakers. Their windows were decorated, showing the season; there was Santa in his sleigh, elves and reindeer all around. Every window of every store had something different to see. Oh! How I wish the young people of today could see the Christmases that people of my generation knew. There were dancing bears, beautiful horses with diamond-inlaid saddles on their backs, reindeer pulling Santa's sleigh, electric trains going down the tracks until they stopped at a station: they stood still a while, and then with a puff of smoke they would start on their treck again; snowmen, and dancing elves that danced, just for me! I thought these things were real, I kind of dreaded the coming of spring but it would be grand to see the crocuses and other flowers bloom, and the grass get green again, and not have snow all over but I would not have my Chrismas! Hey look! The kids are having a snowball fight. Look out little girl! That boy is going to hit you with a big one. Whoops! He got you right on back of the head; it's a good thing she turned in time. Watch, she will get even, she is packing the snow, now she is rolling it into a ball. Pow! She got him in the front of his neck. He didn't think she could throw so good, I guess, but it serves him right, he has been picking on her all of the time that I have been watching them. He probably picked on her because she is the smallest and she is a girl, but wait, there is a boy hiding behind behind the snowman! He looks like he is waiting for the girl, he is! Damn! He let her have it right in the kisser! Oh! What fun it was when I was young, I remember when I didn't have to be in this wheelchair. I bet I could beat those kids in a snowball fight. Now that I am so old, I can't even go outside, this damn wheelchair would get stuck in the snow and I would freeze in the cold weather. I get cold just thinking about it! I think I had better pull the blanket a little higher on my shoulders, there, that feels a little better. It is the winter of my life now, but I have such fond memories of Christmas in the city. The End
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