Posted By: DanRMorris |
Tags: Alaska, Christmas, Fairbanks, Holiday Stories, North Pole, Santa, Santa Claus's house, travel, travel stories, travel story
Posted in Ever Been There Before?
I lived on Elmendorf Air Force Base when I was a kid. That’s the one just outside Anchorage and just down the street from Sarah Palin’s Wasilla. It’s a cool place to grow up, let me tell you. Having grown up in 11 or 12 different states I feel like an expert on ‘cool’ places to grow up. Think about this from a kid’s perspective. In the summer – it’s light all the time. 2:00 it’s light. 6:00 it’s light. Bedtime it’s light. Playing outside never ends. And Anchorage is not too hot, not too cold – just right. And then in the winter you get to make snowmen, go sledding and build snow forts from October through March. Did you know that just about every elementary school has an ice rink? And then there are moose walking around and they are the biggest animals ever. The neighborhood dads used to make an ice rink in the backyard by shoveling out a big 20 x 30 area and using the snow to make walls around the outside edge. Then they’d all put their hoses into the middle and fill it up overnight. Like I said, living in Alaska as a kid is cool.
Well one year we drove north to Fairbanks. Do you know what’s in Fairbanks – Santa Claus’s house. Cool, eh? Yeah, just outside of Fairbanks is North Pole, Alaska and alongside the highway is the cheesiest, giant Santa themed gift shop. Oh wait, from a kid’s perspective – and then when you’re leaving Fairbanks you get to a place where the snowbank is really high, you turn into the parking lot where the reindeer land and you get to go into Santa’s candy covered house. It’s filled with toys and ornaments and elves and music and colors. It’s awesome. And all the toys are on racks that you can spin around and there are toys hanging on all sides of the racks. And toys are on shelves down low and way up high – so high your dad has to help get things down. Santa Claus’s house is the greatest place to visit because it doesn’t matter when you go there – it’s always Christmas.
Anyway, I think we visited it in July. But for some reason I remember all that snow. What’s funny is I remember all kinds of stuff like that. It’s kinda like the smurfs. I remember them so vividly all blue with white hats and yellow mushrooms, green trees and Gargamel’s grey cat. I have this clear vision of life when I was a kid that’s so different than reality. I have 3 kids now – and I wonder. Are the smurfs blue in their world? I wonder – because I remember them so vividly and yet we had a black and white TV.
I hope your childhood memories are as kid-like, and you have memories of Santa too.
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Posted By: DanRMorris |
Tags: Christmas, Iraq Christmas, patriotic, poem, soldier poem
Posted in The Written Word
The embers glowed softly, and in their dim light,
I gazed round the room and I cherished the sight.
My wife was asleep, her head on my chest,
My daughter beside me, angelic in rest.
Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white,
Transforming the yard to a winter delight.
The sparkling lights in the tree I believe,
Completed the magic that was Christmas Eve.
My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep,
Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep.
In perfect contentment, or so it would seem,
So I slumbered, perhaps I started to dream.
The sound wasn’t loud, and it wasn’t too near,
But I opened my eyes when it tickled my ear.
Perhaps just a cough, I didn’t quite know, Then the
sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow.
My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear,
And I crept to the door just to see who was near.
Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night,
A lone figure stood, his face weary and tight.
A soldier, I puzzled, some twenty years old,
Perhaps a Marine, huddled here in the cold.
Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled,
Standing watch over me, and my wife and my child.
“What are you doing?” I asked without fear,
“Come in this moment, it’s freezing out here!
Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve,
You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve!”
For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift,
Away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts..
To the window that danced with a warm fire’s light
Then he sighed and he said “Its really all right,
I’m out here by choice. I’m here every night.”
“It’s my duty to stand at the front of the line,
That separates you from the darkest of times.
No one had to ask or beg or implore me,
I’m proud to stand here like my fathers before me.
My Gramps died at ‘ Pearl on a day in December,”
Then he sighed, “That’s a Christmas ‘Gram always remembers.”
My dad stood his watch in the jungles of ‘ Nam ‘,
And now it is my turn and so, here I am.
I’ve not seen my own son in more than a while,
But my wife sends me pictures, he’s sure got her smile.
Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag,
The red, white, and blue… an American flag.
I can live through the cold and the being alone,
Away from my family, my house and my home.
I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet,
I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat.
I can carry the weight of killing another,
Or lay down my life with my sister and brother..
Who stand at the front against any and all,
To ensure for all time that this flag will not fall.”
” So go back inside,” he said, “harbor no fright,
Your family is waiting and I’ll be all right.”
“But isn’t there something I can do, at the least,
“Give you money,” I asked, “or prepare you a fe ast?
It seems all too little for all that you’ve done,
For being away from your wife and your son.”
Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret,
“Just tell us you love us, and never forget.
To fight for our rights back at home while we’re gone,
To stand your own watch, no matter how long.
For when we come home, either standing or dead,
To know you remember we fought and we bled.
Is payment enough, and with that we will trust,
That we mattered to you as you mattered to us.”
LCDR Jeff Giles, SC, USN
30th Naval Constru ction Regiment
OIC, Logistics Cell One
Al Taqqadum, Iraq
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