Tales from Exit 22 by Al Batt

 

Once upon a time, we didn’t call the day after Thanksgiving Black Friday.

We called it the day after Thanksgiving. It was a day to eat leftover turkey in all forms but cookies.

Over 3,000 people lined up outside the Mall of America waiting for its doors to open at 5 a.m. on Black Friday. I wonder if they all wore ugly Christmas sweaters? I spoke in a lovely southern state recently where I asked the large crowd how many had been to the Mall of America. Many hands went up. I asked how many had ever visited Minnesota. Fewer hands were raised. The famous MOA has 500 stores and 12,287 parking spaces. I liked it better when it was Metropolitan Stadium and Harmon Killebrew hit a 520-foot home run there. I appreciate all the retail clerks who somehow retain a sense of humor on Black Friday and on all other days.

As a boy, I did my Christmas shopping at Einar’s Hardware and Sibilrud’s Grocery. Both stocked Christmas gift items and were within easy pedaling distance for my bicycle.

We weren’t poor, but we weren’t rich either. Or, to put it another way, we weren’t rich, but we weren’t poor either. Dad gave Mom an unsigned Christmas card. If she liked it, he gave her the same card the next year. Grandma gave each of her grandchildren a card without money included. We had to go to her house to get it.

I saved money to buy gifts for my parents and listened all year, hoping for hints of desired items. Dad wished he had a new tractor. He said that while skinning his knuckles repairing an old tractor. While paying bills, Mom said it’d be nice to have $1 million. Those gift suggestions were just out of my price range, so I asked my folks what they’d like for Christmas. I wanted it to be the best Christmas ever. Mom wanted everyone in her family to be happy. Dad told me to ask my mother, then related his Christmas story of getting a wooden pencil and an orange for Christmas presents one year. He was overjoyed with the gifts. As a member of a big family experiencing hard times, he’d expected to get nothing.

Shopping locally made and makes sense. Lacking funding from Wall Street, I fell under the intense scrutiny of helpful adults acting as volunteer gift counselors. “I don’t think your mother would want that.” “Your father could use this.” “How much money do you have?”

Then as now, I used the jack-in-the-box method of shopping. A jack-in-the-box is a toy that consists of a box with a crank. When the crank is turned, it plays a melody, often “Pop Goes the Weasel.” When the tune ends, the lid opens and a clown pops out of the box. That’s gift shopping. If you get cranking, something pops up. There was no whining, temper tantrum, pouting or crossed fingers required because I didn’t want anything. I needed to buy gifts. It was a day of atonement, when I made up for the crummy gifts I’d given the year before.

I considered Silly Putty housed in a plastic egg. It was a bouncing, stretching delight that copied images from comics. Slinky, a spring “Who walks the stair without a care. It shoots so high in the sky. Bounce up and down just like a clown. Everyone knows it’s Slinky.”

Dad wouldn’t expect Silly Putty or a Slinky. Each year, I got Dad a pair of work gloves and a box of chocolate-covered cherry cordials — chocolate-covered cherries filled with a sweet syrup — made by the Brock Candy Company, popular for 60 years until bought by E.J. Brach Corporation and its name changed to Brach’s.

I’d saved funny pages from Sunday newspapers, so I had the wrapping paper covered. I considered things. A calendar would have been a swell gift, but the bank and the elevator gave them each year. It was bang for their bucks. Coffee mug. Mother drank coffee so strong that it came out of the cup like oil being drained from a truck engine. Dish towels. Washcloths. Grease gun. A pair of warm socks. An iPhone — I was ahead of my time. Perfume cheaper by the quart.

I gave Dad a pair of work gloves and a box of chocolate-covered cherry cordials again.

I gave Mom a pair of work gloves and a box of chocolate-covered cherry cordials, too.

I didn’t want to show favoritism.

Al Batt’s columns appear every Wednesday and Saturday.