Chapter 38

Christmas morning was pleasant. We kids were getting almost civilized in our present opening. Other years it was rip packages open as fast as you could. Now we sat in the living room and opened one package at a time working in a circle. Each present would be opened and displayed for all to see.

This was probably Mary’s last year with Santa, so we all pretended. There was something a little sad about it. My baby sister was growing up through that process had been going on for a while.

I would never forget the day when she was three years old and she had a fight about the color of a dress with Mum at J C Penney. She wanted royal blue, not the yellow one. Maybe women were born that way.

After a light lunch, we played games most of the afternoon. Then I spent more time typing out the Shawnee letters. They were actually letters to the Shawnee. They were in what is called copperplate writing.

They looked machine-printed but were handwritten. The practice that must have taken! I liked IBM more and more. At first, it was hard to read but once my eyes were used to the letters I could read it like normal.

There were nine letters in all. They all made the same empty promises. Chief Blackhoof must have spent a lot of his life in despair with how the white man was treating his people. He also was smart enough to know that those of his people who didn’t adapt to the new culture were doomed. Even those that did had the issues of alcohol and disease to face.

I don’t know if it is true or not, but I read that the European practice of mixing water with beer and wine had given them over time a genetic defense against extreme alcohol abuse in many cases.

Defense against the disease was built up the hard way. Those that didn’t die passed along an improved immune system. The Indians would take the same hundreds or thousands of years the Europeans did to develop immunities.

Dinner was again a light meal. The entire family played Monopoly after dinner. Mum and Mary devastated us. They landed on Park Place the first round and Boardwalk the second.

We guys fought gamely, trading each other to get sets and buying houses and hotels as fast as we could. It was to no avail. The female Jackson Housing Empire took us down.

We teased Mary about her running our real housing business. She told us she would do it if we boys would clean all the new houses. That girl is going places.

I read more about my sailor hero that night. It is hard to imagine electing a life at sea knowing that you would be seasick at the beginning of every voyage. As bad as my ability to sing was, at least I wasn’t tone-deaf. I could recognize our national anthem when I heard it.

The weather had turned to freezing rain on Boxing Day. This is the day after Christmas. In England, in the old days, this was a Christmas box with a tip or present given to those tradesmen who served the family.

Mum told us that in England that was when they held the large mounted fox hunts. She said they were a lot of fun but could be very dangerous. She didn’t answer me when I asked her if she had ever ridden in one.

I finally was so bored I finished up sewing on all the badges on my new scout uniforms. I met an English scout at a camporee once. He told me that we Americans wore so many badges on our uniforms we looked like Christmas trees.

After all of the sewing, I had to agree with him. My fingers were so sore. I tried using Mum’s thimbles but they were too small.

Denny spent time with me updating patches on his uniform. He was now a patrol leader and had just made First Class so he had to put the patches on his shirt. I must say my stitches were neater than his. I told him that and he got mad and told Mum what I said.