Christmas is Here
The Turners on Davitt Road with Santa
Pierce Turner photo of Santa on 14th street 2015
I still miss Santa
Christmas is here! It’s not coming … it’s here. I have felt it, but still wasn’t aware of its approach.
On Thanksgiving we went to my wife Clare’s cousin in Philadelphia, and while we stood in line in the overland train station, we were subject to a long litany of mournful, maudlin Christmas songs by Bing Crosby and a familiar female voice from the same school of motoring. It affected the colour of the station, seemed to turn the lights down to a dusky pale and sickly fluorescent. I felt like a refugee that was being deported as we stood silently in a line of other refugees, I wanted to run out of the station, but couldn’t because we needed a ticket. I looked at a man in his late 50’s with long grey-brown hair draped behind his ears and reading glasses descending his pointed nose working behind one of the windows, and was overcome with imaginative pity for him. “I feel trapped? Imagine how he feels? I will have my ticket in five or ten minutes and be out of here, he spends eight hours a day listening to this piped funeral music” Even the song “White Christmas” would sound cheerful in the middle of this lot. “Mary’s boy child Jesus Christ was born on Christmas day” “Oh Mammy, come back and get me, I am so incurably homesick” Who is this for? Nobody seems to be listening; is it a mandatory order that all public places have to play this music?
Anyway …. I am attaching two Christmas photos for you because it is Christmas! One I took last week over on 14th Street and First Avenue, and one old one of my family with Santa on a visit at our Davitt Road fireman’s bungalow in Wexford Town, I’m the little chubby fella sitting on his lap. I was probably about three and a half, judging by my oldest sister Delores, she looks about fourteen and she is twelve years older than me. Apparently I insisted that this Santa was our next-door neighbour Richard Crosby. I do remember thinking that his beard looked fake, and saw real brown eyes, nose and forehead beneath it, so he couldn’t be real, had to be one of the neighbours. I’m sure he and the photographer, knocking on doors, house to house, trying to make a few bob for Christmas, were delighted with me.
When I was seven, Santa brought me a fire engine for Christmas, a beautiful red one, with a silver bell on the front. I could sit in it and pedal up and down the street. I thought I would explode with excitement when I saw it standing in the middle of the sitting room with the Christmas tree twinkling behind it. A blazing coal fire added to my facial heat, and I went red from head to toe. I drove it out to the hallway and back, while everyone oohed and awed. My parents must have had a few bob that year, considering I’m the youngest of six, it was a pretty fancy present.
The following year I was more excited than I had been the previous – “what could they come up with this time?” I started to rev up for it around October. Speculating all the possibilities with my friends on the street, they had been as astonished as me at the fire engine; some of them had gone in it and hated getting out.
Christmas Eve I could hardly sleep. My mother gave me a cup of hot milk with white pepper in it to calm me down. I fell asleep in no time. The following morning I woke up to find a red and golden crocheted stocking push-pinned to the end of my bed. It had my name written on a tiny Santa card, so I knew that it was from Santa. I tore the stocking down and reached my hand inside of what seemed like a not too stuffed stocking. There were two things in there, a crunchy bar and a Hohner Harmonica.
“Is that it? ……… This can’t be it!”
I doubt very much that my disappointment was not vented.
I never did get another present from Santa that matched up to the fire engine, and it wasn’t for the want of trying, apparently I believed in him as long as I could, some say I was fourteen. I really think they’re exaggerating, I mean, I was listening to Velvet Underground when I was fifteen; I got that album from ?? …Sant….oh oh!
So Happy Christmas everyone. The album is done and I can’t wait for you to hear it. I am so grateful to those of you who pledged and allowed me to make it. Over 190 people pledged and I know many more of you will buy it, but just didn’t get around to pledging. I plan to make an audio clip with short segments of the songs so that you can hear it. If you like it, maybe I can convince you to mail order it in advance so that we can move everything at a quicker pace than usual and avoid Amazon or iTunes and others taking a big cut off the top. I’ll post details soon of how that will happen.
Love to all Pierce xx