Creative Writing Challenge #13-"over the river and through the wood was nothing like what i expected..."

I had one of those amazingly simple childhoods that, at the time seemed somewhat bleak, but in hindsight was wonderful and magical and what I wish my own kids had experienced. Mother and Daddy married in 1945 after he'd been wounded in the war and sent home. They started a dairy farm in southwestern Arkansas and things went pretty well for quite a while. But by the time I came along (number four in the five-member sibling group) they'd lost the farm to drought and had moved back to North Texas to the safety of their families. Daddy had nine siblings, all of whom lived relatively close to where they'd grown up and most of whom had three or more children. Family gatherings were outrageous!! Mother had one brother and wasn't particularly fond of "The Raglands" as we were known, collectively. But rituals will survive even the strongest-willed daughter-in-law. Every Christmas Eve, unless you were in hospital in a coma, you were expected at my Grandma Maggie's.

My grandpa, John Brown (named for the abolishionist), was a carpenter. Some of the buildings he helped construct are still standing in our little hometown even 60 years after the last brick was placed. When he got ready to retire, he found a little piece of paradise on a hill in Bosque County overlooking the Brazos River. He built Maggie a two-bedroom house on that hill with a flush toilet and electric lights. She made quilts for the beds and curtains for the windows. Together they planted a garden and orchard. They picked wild Muscadine grapes and made jelly. They caught huge channel catfish and crappie for the freezer. And they let us kids run around barefoot and half naked like wild Indians over the hills between the house and the river. The land was rented from the Newman family who had half a dozen rental cabins over the next hill from Grandma's. The state had a sign out by the highway marking the turn - Kimball Bend Park - but we never called it anything except Newman's Camp.

Roughly an hour from where we all lived, Newman's Camp was situated off the main highway along a section of the old Chisolm Trail. To get there, you drove (literally) over the (Brazos) river and through the woods. We never made the trip by horse-drawn sleigh, but until I was seven we all piled into the cab of Dad's 1940's era Ford truck for the cold and bumpy ride. Two adults and five kids, no seat belts, no radio. I really can't recall if there was a heater, but Dad was a smoker so every so often the window on his side got rolled down enough to let the smoke and ashes out and I can't recall that we were ever cold even then. Besides, if it was warm enough, the kids rode in the wooden truck bed. While I'm sure we looked like a pile of "po' white trash" flying down the highway, it was just another trip Newman's for us.

There were dozens of "markers" along our route, the television towers in Cedar Hill, the cement plant in Midlothian, the huge cemetary in Cleburne, Phillip Nolan's headstone along the highway just south of Rio Vista, the "little red trading post" and Katy Bridge just before turning off Highway 67 onto the white chalk road, the remnants of an Austin stone school house next to the Chisolm Trail marker, the cattle guard and metal Coke sign that meant we'd finally arrived and finally my grandparent's little house on the hilltop with dozens of cars parked willy nilly in the grass all around it.

Depending on when we got there, getting into the house could be a trick. If everyone came it was almost standing room only. But my grandmother would be in her element. The tree was a fresh-cut cedar strung with lights and popcorn. The adults sat in chairs lined up along the walls and the kids took command of the floor. Some of the girls wore pincurls under headscarves so their annual family Christmas Day photo would be perfect. Most of the younger kids wore their pjs. We sang carols and told stories and laughed like loons. Maggie spent the year making little cloth clown dolls out of quilting scraps and poodle dogs out of plastic dry cleaning bags so that every child would have a gift. The older kids were given hand-pieced quilts until she was just too old and feeble to make them. Grandpa would have a "spit can" that almost always got kicked over, much to the disgust of my mother and the other daughters-in-law who, it turns out, were also recipients of the occasional pinch to the backside by the old goat!! Then, somewhere around ten p.m. (when all of our mothers did in fact know where their children were!) we'd load up the cars and trucks and head home.

The tradition was kept as long as my grandparents lived in that house, over the river and through the woods. But eventually, as it must, life took a turn and they moved back to town. Maggie died in 1976, on Christmas Eve.

My sister and younger brother and I went back to Newman's several years ago. Maggie and John Brown were long gone, along with many of the aunts, uncles and cousins. The house was still there and appeared to be occupied; we didn't knock. We sat across the way near one of the old picnic tables and talked about Chirstmas at Grandma's house. On that quiet afternoon with a breeze blowing over the hillside you could almost hear the voices ringing out... "over the river and through the woods, to Newman's Camp we go!!"