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Dr. James Hora, our late family physician, always liked to tell the story
of how he picked up my mother on that starlit night in 1947 and drove her to
St. Anthony's Hospital on the west side of Chicago where she delivered me at
2:59 in the morning.
I don't know what it is, but there must be some connection between
entering the world in the wee small hours of the morning and working most of
my adult life with a starting time somewhere between midnight and 5:30 a.m.
Being such an early riser certainly gives one a unique perspective on the
world.
I and my brother, Len, were raised first in a two-flat in Cicero. We
lived on the second floor, my maternal grandparents on the first floor. Our
paternal grandparents lived two doors away. My Mom's and Dad's romance was
one of those girl-almost-next-door kinds of things, complicated by Dad's duty
in the Army during World War II.
It was for my first Christmas, when I was just about nine months old,
that Dad bought a Lionel train set. Through the years it was, and still is,
part of our Christmas home decorations. A Christmas tree isn't a Christmas
tree unless it's got a train chugging around it. About the only time it
wasn't in use in recent years was for the Christmas of 1992. Dad died one
week before the Holiday.
Once during those early years my paternal Grandpa dressed up and played
Santa Claus (was it for Len and me, or to enliven the holiday for the adults?
I always wondered).
I vaguely remember the big snowy Christmas of 1951 when the snow was
piled well above my head.
Those were days when we had a coal furnace in the basement and an
oil-burning space heater in our flat.
Those were also days when my family observed a Bohemian tradition, St.
Nicholas's Day, December 6th. The stockings would go up the night before, and
in the morning they'd be filled with small toys, gingerbread, and other
goodies. It's a tradition my wife readily adopted (she loves getting
presents), and even the dogs and cats that have lived with us through 26
years of marriage have always sat expectantly and waited to be given the
treats that appeared in the night in their stockings.
Len and I attended Mary Queen of Heaven school in Cicero. Then, when he
was 11 and I was 13, we moved to North Riverside, where we finished up
grammar school at Mater Christi and went on to Riverside-Brookfield High
School.
Christmas was always, and still is, a holiday of family get-togethers, at
Grandma Havlicek's until she could no longer manage it, then and still at my
Mom's on Christmas Eve, with Andrea's family on Christmas Day.
I attended the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle, as it was then
called, graduating in the Spring of 1969, or just about a year after I
started work as a newswriter at WBBM.
I must credit and thank Michael Hirsch, a Vietnam veteran, for
befriending me in college, and helping me through the door at my first
weekend radio writing job at old WNUS, and then at WBBM.
Mike went on to a career with Channel 11 in Chicago.
It was at WBBM that I met Andrea Wiley; we were married in 1974.
She has always loved Christmas too, and I must admit, she is much more
aggressive when it comes to decorating for the great holiday. Once we had a
Christmas tree so big that the dealer had to send it over in a truck. I had
to fasten it to the walls with wires to make sure it would stay standing.
Besides the tree, the train and the St. Nicholas stockings, we now have
boughs of green on the walls, wreaths adorning doors and windows, and dozens
of Christmas cards stuck to the walls.
In 1993, we adopted a baby boy, Jamie, and for the past seven years we
have experienced the extreme joy of trying to arrange wonderful Christmas
memories for him.
© 2000 Cornerstone Press Chicago
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