My father always welcomed an opportunity to go back up into the hills of Showers Pass where he was born and raised, forty miles from our home in Eureka. The weekend before Christmas usually found us going there to cut a Christmas tree. Dad whistled a little tune as the car toiled up the mountain road in second gear, and in some steeper places, in first gear, while my sisters and I sat in the back seat and clung to each other and the hanging straps inside each door. The roads were mostly one lane, with occasional turnouts for passing. Drivers tooted their horns on curves to warn oncoming traffic. If two cars met on a steep part of the narrow mountain trace, the car coming downhill had to hack up to a wide spot to let the other car pass. When the road traversed a cliff on one side, high above the treetops, we girls shut our eyes tight until we had passed that part. Even so, we knew we were safe with our dad, who would never let anything harm us. Would our lives always be this secure? We thought so.

We traveled past Freshwater, where my father’s “little orchestra,” as he called his small band, played for grange dances. Then our car climbed up hairpin turns to Kneeland, and on up to the mountaintop where the road became more level and followed the ridge. Many of Dad’s childhood friends still lived up there. He always stopped at the different ranches to visit a few minutes or just say hello. Sometimes we went as far as the old Iaqua School house, another place where Dad’s musical group played for dances. On the west side of the ridge road, we passed hills covered in dry summer grass, dotted with an occasional spreading oak tree, the country my dad had grown up in and where he had learned to hunt. He was an outdoorsman who happened to have three daughters. No sons. At times friends would tease him about his lack of a son to go hunting with him, but my father always told them he was happy with his three girls. He would not trade us for boys.

We always wanted to take home some of the mistletoe that hung in clumps from the topmost branches of the oak trees, too high to reach. Dad would stop the car and take his twenty-two rifle from the trunk, load it, and shoot the mistletoe out of the trees. We took home the rubbery- leafed bunches trimmed with waxy, pearl-like berries, tied them with a red ribbon, and hung them in the doorways in case a prince charming should come along. We were such dreamers.

Douglas fir and redwood trees grew on the east exposure of the mountains. Maybe it rained more there, or there was less sunlight. This area seemed better suited to conifers. My older sister, Pat, was in charge of deciding which tree to cut. In her estimation, it had to touch the ceiling in the living room of our small 1920s-style bungalow on Harris Street. We found the perfect tree, sawed it down, and helped Dad tie it onto the top of the car for the trip home. There he built a stand from scraps of two by fours and carried the tree into the house. I always tried to help carry it, and he let me do that, although I was probably more hindrance than help. We set the tree beside the large front window in the living room.

My sisters and I decorated the tree. Pat knew exactly how to put on the colored lights: red, amber, blue, green. She draped ropes of silver tinsel from one branch to another. Then my little sister, Betty, and I could help with the ornaments our mother had wrapped carefully in tissue paper and saved from year to year; fragile, ornate tree baubles made from paper-thin glass in different shapes, and tinted in various colors. Betty and I each had a bell ornament made of the same thin material, that had been given to us by Amy Winston, who stayed with us on the rare occasions my parents needed to go somewhere without children. Betty’s glass bell was pink and mine was my favorite shade of soft green.

The final step in decorating our tree was to hang silvery icicles from all the branches, putting them on one at a time to be sure they would hang straight down and shimmer in the glow of the colored tree lights. This was a tedious job we soon tired of, but we kept at it, because icicles made the tree look so nice. Dad reached up to put on the top decoration — an ornament resembling the spires in Russian architecture: a round decorated glass ball with a tall point that touched the ceiling. Mother took a white sheet from her linen closet, shook it out and bunched it up around the base to simulate snow and to hide the wooden stand. Finally, our tree was decorated. We turned on the colored lights and stood back to admire our hard work. Beautiful. A Christmas tree out of a fairy tale.

There were not many presents under the tree during the 1930s, and we did not hang up our stockings to be filled, but Mother saw to it that everyone had something — all the aunts and uncles and grandparents — besides our own family of five. When we were very young, it was a tradition on Christmas Eve to go for a ride through the town after the dinner dishes were done and admire the outdoor lighting displays. Imagine our surprise when we came back home to find that Santa had been to our house while we were gone and had left gifts for my sisters and me under the tree. How could he have done that? How could we have missed him? It was a puzzle.

One year a few weeks before Christmas, our whole family dressed in our best clothes and went Christmas shopping in downtown Eureka. This was a rare occasion in the 1930s. At the Woolworth’s Five and Ten-Cent Store, we girls chose new ecru cotton stockings for Aunt Carrie, and a set of little juice glasses with oranges painted on them, and held in a green-painted wire rack, for our mother. A book for our father. Then we went to Lincoln’s Stationery Store on Fifth Street and climbed the steps to the toy balcony where Betty and I found large baby dolls with composition heads, arms and legs, and stuffed bodies. Their short, blonde hair was soft, and curly. Their eyes opened and closed, and they cried, “Mama,” when we tipped them back and forth. That Christmas, Santa left these baby dolls under the tree for us. Not until years later did I discover this was the very same store where my mother’s first doll had been purchased — her father’s hired man bought the doll for her, while she lay with a broken hip in the brand new Sequoia Hospital on Main Street.

We usually “had our tree” on Christmas Eve, because on Christmas morning, my mother was busy getting dinner ready in time to be served by two o’clock in the afternoon. After we had opened our gifts on Christmas Eve, Mother went back into the kitchen to chop prodigious amounts of celery and onion, ready to make stuffing for the turkey first thing in the morning. Pumpkin and mince pies had been baked that day with a tablespoon of spirits sprinkled over each mincemeat pie before the latticework crust went on.

In 1934, the Christmas I was seven years old, a Shirley Temple doll sat under the tree just for me, I loved Shirley Temple, read every book about her that I could get my hands on, and knew all about the playhouse in her back yard in Santa Monica, My doll sat under the Christmas tree with her curly top, her famous dimples, and her smile showing tiny white teeth. She was the most perfect doll a little girl could want — not too big, nor too small. She was just right. I carried her around with me all day. Eventually, walking by the dining room table, I noticed a box with my doll’s name printed on it. I ran to my mother and told her Santa forgot to take my doll’s box away with him. She laughed and hurried away with the box, but I knew right then who Santa Claus really was.

One Christmas, a few years later, Betty and I received special gifts from one of our father’s oldest friends, Clarence Haugen, whose children were grown and who lived alone. We included him in many family occasions. He was a sign painter by trade and had painted the sign with a huge fish — a steelhead — that could be seen for many years on Highway 101 going south near Loleta. That Christmas, he gave Betty and me art tablets of drawing paper, and boxes of water color paints, a thoughtful gift for children who liked to draw things.

As we girls grew older, Christmases changed, but the tree still always had to touch the ceiling. Pat always put on the tree lights. Dad always put on the top ornament. We discontinued the ride to view Christmas lights on Christmas Eve, as we all knew who Santa was. Besides, during the war years, outdoor lighting was kept to a minimum. But we still kept our tradition of singing Christmas carols. I loved the beautiful harmonies we sisters created when we blended our voices together. Although my father loved to play the violin while I played the piano, strangely enough, I do not recall that we ever played Christmas carols together.

Most of Dad’s time was spent earning a living for us in his gas station and auto repair shop, which was next door to our house. He usually went back out after dinner, and sometimes worked until two or three in the morning. He kept one of his violins out in his work shop, and sometimes, if he was working extra late to get a job out for somebody by the next day, he might stop, take the violin down from where it hung on the wall out of harm’s way, and play a little music to soothe his soul. On the evenings he did not have to go back out to the shop, he would play the violin he kept in the house. When Dad played his violin, it seemed that everything was all right. We were safe, wrapped in the soothing notes of his music.

A week before Christmas 1944, we had put up our tree once more. The tip touched the ceiling. The colored lights sent their rays reflecting from the silvery icicles in holiday splendor. My father had been ill for some months, although he still did his work. Mother spent more time in the shop helping where she could, not only keeping the books, but winding armatures for motors, and pumping gas for customers. The doctors had been treating Dad for stomach ulcers, but had finally decided it must be something else. He could not keep anything down. Everything he ate came right back up. Dad sat exhausted in the big overstuffed chair by the fireplace that day and admired our Christmas tree. He said he thought it was the prettiest tree we had ever had.

I never saw him again. Early the next morning. Mother took him to General Hospital, across Harris Street from our house. Exploratory surgery was done that day. Cancer was found choking off the colon. He was too weak to survive the surgery. My father didn’t like funerals. I had often heard him say after he had been to one, that he didn’t want everyone sad and carrying on when it was his time. No crying. He wanted some music and maybe even dancing to celebrate the wonderful life he had lived. He was only forty-six years old.

At the funeral the day before Christmas, I did not cry. My father had said not to cry, so I didn’t, although it was hard to keep back the tears. After the funeral we returned to our house that felt cold and empty without him. The prettiest tree we ever had stood in all its tinseled glory with packages underneath it.

Mother decided our father would have wanted us to open our gifts in his memory. I slowly opened my packages. The house was too still — too quiet. Where was the music he had wanted? There was no joy in the world without him.

###

The story above is excerpted from the Winter 2009 issue of the Humboldt Historian, a journal of the Humboldt County Historical Society. It is reprinted here with permission. The Humboldt County Historical Society is a nonprofit organization devoted to archiving, preserving and sharing Humboldt County’s rich history. You can become a member and receive a year’s worth of new issues of The Humboldt Historian at this link.