CULTURE
Christmas at Louie's
Louie lit a match, held it perilously close to his nose, and revived the dead
cigar butt. Four quick puffs erupted before he shook the flame from the match.
I’d seen this before – on the cover of my battered copy of “The Night Before Christmas” which I had prized since childhood, the one with Santa Claus standing next to his pack of toys, a wreath of pipe smoke encircling his head before it disappears up the fireplace chimney.
Take away the red suit, white beard and high topped boots, replace it with a tartan plaid jacket and open collar white shirt. Focus on the smile, that mischievous smile. And there, by golly, was old St. Nick, or as I came to know him, my father-in–law, Louie Nierstheimer.
But we were in the drab basement of Louie’s home on Fell Avenue in Bloomington, Illinois, where every year Cherie’s father and I assembled toys on Christmas Eve. In the dim recesses of Louie’s version of Santa’s Workshop, he created a world of holiday magic.
Year after year, Mama Lu would begin stockpiling bundles and boxes in the early fall, presents she purchased or ordered from pharmacy supply catalogues. The flow wouldn’t end until Louie, puffing on his cigar, and I, choking on the smoke, two jovial, overweight elves, went to work.
Our workbench was a massive, long-ignored billiard table, lighted by two dangling green-shaded lamps.
Louie knew how to confront the toy shop challenge. He had a bottle of Old Crow hidden in the basement for just such occasions. So his first order of business was to rinse a shot glass in the laundry sink, pour in three fingers of whisky and then toss it down “neat.”
If I followed his example, there would be no Christmas. So in the spirit of the season, I scrounged around for a bottle of beer, pulled the cap and lifted it in our first toast of the evening. Louie responded, his face beaming.
Then to work. Louie attacked the toy pile like it was newly delivered inventory waiting to go on the shelves of his drug store. He rounded up the boxes from far corners and cabinets and piled them at one end of the slate-topped table.
Pushing aside a smelly ash tray containing two or three well-chewed cigar butts, a basement fixture, I would pick the most challenging box, open it and we’d go to work.
Combined, we were the least skilled, the least qualified elves in Santa’s distribution system. With us, Santa was pushing his odds.
In the early years, there was little challenge – mobiles to be hung above the crib; or squeeze toys that went “honk-honk”, “blat-blat” or “mooooo”. To be followed in later years by Mr. Machines that jingled and jangled and little kiddy workbenches on which to screw big wooden, brightly colored nuts and bolts, and to pound pegs with an undersized mallet.
Then, as the boys grew older, our job became more complicated – it was, in succession, kiddy cars and rocking horses; tricycles and sleds, pedal cars, bicycles with training wheels and electric racing cars. Fire engines and trucks. Castles and model villages. Radios and electronic gadgets.
Using Louie’s pitifully inadequate collection of tools, we screwed, twisted, pounded and wrenched to get the wheels on the axles, the steering wheels into the cabs and the headlights on the front and the tail lights on the rear.
We assembled and tested them all, careful not to awaken the cherubs sleeping upstairs under the eaves next to the attic, an ideal location, I pointed out, to hear the clatter of reindeer hoofs and the screech of sled runners.
Some of the toys were easy to put together: “Insert Tab A into Slot A; Tab B into Slot B”. Then things became more difficult. The tip-off was when the instructions began: “You should have 6 grommets, 12 thing-a-ma-jigs, 2 gizmos, 14 screws, 14 nuts and 4 cotter keys.”And, of course, there would be 14 nuts – “that’s okay” – but only 13 bolts.
Then, in trying to solve the shortage, we would discover that the kiddy car was manufactured overseas to metric measurements. In short, the nuts didn’t always fit the bolts.
This kind of situation led to an interesting discovery: Louie had a remarkable collection of nuts, bolts and screws, screen door handles, hinges, curtain hooks, picture wires and electrical receptacles, switches and light bulbs.
And remarkably, the wood screws were separated from the bolts, the 10 penny nails from the brads, the staples from the tacks. All the window locks were in one cigar box; the door hinges in another. This was in contrast to the jumble of nails, screws, washers, staples, tacks and screen door springs in my own basement.
It was evidence that Louie at some time had spent
countless hours in the basement, sorting and organizing the hardware he had
accumulated.
Without discussing it with him, I concluded that his friends, Old Crow and
Jack Daniels, might have been the inspiration for the meticulous accounting
of the hardware.
We often worked for long minutes in silence except to interpret instructions, or my request for a certain tool. Then Louie would start humming Santa Claus is Coming to Town.
Sometimes we would discuss politics. A question from me about Mayor Kennelly’s Chicago political machine would always stir his ire.
“You know that Chicago Democrat crowd always controls Springfield,” he would comment, eyeing me suspiciously because I had raised the question.
And I always would ask how Christmas business had been. He never reported a bad year, often reiterating his wisdom in closing the soda fountain and in its place installation of a cosmetic department.
“Big losses in sodas; big profits in cosmetics,” he pointed out.
Then, abruptly Louie might say: “Did I ever tell you the one about the collie that wandered into the saloon and ordered a bottle of beer?”
Since I have a mind that cannot remember the punch line for a joke five minutes after I have heard it, I could truthfully answer: “No, Louie, tell me.”
There would be several such jokes – shaggy dog stories, dumb blond stories, you name it -- because on Christmas Eve Louie would have had contact with many of his old cronies who stopped by The Drug expecting to be invited into the backroom for a holiday drink. Louie closed the store when Mama Lu picked him up on the way home from the evening Candlelight Service. With his friends dropping by, Louie made the best of the wait.
Usually, by 1:30 a.m. we had finished our holiday project. Louie would pour a nightcap, and I’d finish my beer – now warm. A toast to each other: “Merry Christmas, until next year,” Louie would say.
Then we would head upstairs with the toys. It usually took several trips, with me burping the warm beer.
In the living room, or at the dining room table, Cherie and her mother would still be wrapping gifts and filling stockings as Christmas carols played on the Magnavox.
Bobby and Mike would have made a final trip down the attic stairs for a drink of water, their last excuse to keep an eye out for Santa. Ken would have fallen asleep on the stairs, listening for the pawing of reindeer hoofs.
By now, the Christmas tree was surrounded by heaps of gifts that extended from the fireplace to the baby grand piano, and underneath.
Cherie and I took bites out of the cookies placed on a saucer under the bulging stockings hanging on the fireplace. Cherie quaffed Santa’s glass of milk, and the stage was set for the early morning entrance of three wide-eyed boys who would rush into the room, then invariably pause in wonderment.
And then an eggnog before turning in. And Louie’s final toast to Christmas Eve, with that mischievous smile again:
“What a friend we have in Jesus…”