The Cowboy and the Jackalope
C.E. McClelland
It’s 1971, and you’re six years old, living with your grandmother and grandfather in a small, nondescript town in Idaho named Pinehurst. You were adopted by them when you were three. Your mom eventually explains that the adoption allowed you to receive veteran benefits from your grandfather. You thought the real reason might be that raising two children as a single mom had been too much for her. As your grandfather often said, it was “prob’ly six a’ one, half a dozen of the other.”
At any rate, it’s Christmas morning, 1971. You wake excited but smart; you don’t disturb the adults…yet. You tip-toe into the living room, sit down in front of the giant (to you) Christmas tree, and stare at the presents. Surely Santa got your messages. Is there an Etch-A-Sketch under there? Or that Operation game you’ve seen on television commercials? The 19” Panasonic color console your family scrimped for is the envy of the block. No one envies the fact that your grandfather can no longer work because of his emphysema. Food stamps keep groceries on the table, and your grandfather’s DAV status adds enough money for T-ball, occasional A&W Root Beer floats, and the aforementioned television. Christmas, of course, is left up to Santa.
Eventually, you tire of waiting and pull the knob on the television, cranking the volume just a little too loud in the process. You hear muttering and creaking boards. Gramma ambles in wearing pink, open-toed slippers and a robe. Behind her, Granddad wheels an oxygen tank to the kitchen to make coffee. You get permission to open one present — Yes! The Etch-A-Sketch! — everything else has to wait until your mom arrives. She’s on the last leg of a two-and-a-half-day trip from Texas with your new father, Charles, a foul-mouthed truck driver with whom you immediately fall in love.
A few hours later, everyone’s there. You open presents and find the Operation game, a large G.I. Joe, Hot Wheels cars, and a lot of clothes. Your gifts to everyone are less expensive. Pictures you’ve drawn coupled with lines of poetry you’ve borrowed from various books. Things you worked on for minutes that your parents will keep for decades.
Your mother puts down her cigarette and reaches into her purse to offer you one last present. You tear into the wrapping and open the box to reveal…another wrapped box. You unwrap that and find yet another wrapped box. Even a six-year-old rolls his eyes at this chicanery. After two more boxes, you discover a small snow globe. The state of Texas rests in the back of a crystal ball. In the foreground, a cowboy on a horse whirls a rope, intent on lassoing a rabbit with horns? Years later, you discover a stuffed version of this chimera in a Cracker Barrel, with the legend of the famed “jackalope” inscribed on a plate.
You rush outside and hold the snow globe aloft in the morning sun. It’s thirty-three degrees, but your bare feet and pajamas are fine for a couple of minutes. You shake the globe and watch silver sparkles whirl. If the snow globe is any indication, Texas must be filled with magic and adventure. Cactuses and horses, cowboys and Indians. Years later, you read about the slaughter of the Native Americans and feel guilty for a game you didn’t know enough not to play. Your grandmother yells at you to “come back inside before your feet fall off.”
The day rushes by with visits from family, a ton of food (your Aunt Connie’s huckleberry pie a perennial favorite), and playing with cousins in the front yard’s melting snow. It’s a white Christmas, just barely. That night, you place the snow globe on the table beside your bed. The silver sparkles shine blue in the glow of the nightlight. Five boxes, you think, giggling. Your mom was the funniest person in the world.
Four months later, your family places your grandfather into another box, this one wrapped in the colors of the American flag. Soon after, your grandmother finds her way into a box after a car accident, one that you survive. You take these boxes and place them in your memory, one after the other, and move to Texas to live with your mom and new dad. You grow up expecting to become a brain surgeon; instead, your passion leads you to teach theatre, where you remain for thirty years. All the events of your life are boxed one after the other, wrapped and put away.
Now it’s 2020, and your publisher asks you to write about one special Christmas. While there are many holiday memories, they don’t seem that…memorable. You never boarded a train to the North Pole, never saved an angel by jumping off a bridge. There were presents and family. People came and went. You boxed up each year and set it in an attic somewhere to grow cobwebs.
So, you climb to the attic. Your memories sit there under a faded, yellow bulb. You grab a box and begin. A couple stained layers of divorce rip away easily but leave a huge mess on the floor. The loss of your father and both aunts to cancer are more difficult, the paper around them still thick and hard to rip. After that, things grow easier. The first years of teaching sparkle like aluminum, and you tear through those with a huge grin. You demolish high school graduation, first love, and junior high Sunday School. Finally, you reach the box. With trembling hands, you rip the paper away and see the state of Texas, the cowboy and the jackalope. You swirl the globe and watch the silver flakes fly. Is this enough? you wonder. No matter, it’s what you have. Holidays, like snow globes, needn’t be extraordinary to be special. Just pack those boxes carefully, so nothing breaks. Someday, that snow globe or baseball glove or Barbie will be there and it will be enough for all of you, too.
Thank you for being a part of Santa Watch 2020! Keep reading as we track Santa and giveaway special gifts.
About C.E. McClelland
C.E. McClelland is a new author with Scarsdale Publishing. Keep an eye out for his upcoming novel Dust.
