Christmas 2022.

(written for Jon Solomon’s 25-Hour Holiday Show on WPRB https://wprb.com/jon-solomons-25-hour-holiday-radio-show/)

For many years, the downtown skyline of Columbus, Ohio had one lone solitary skyscraper, the Leveque Tower stood high and bold and a sort of middle finger to the rest of the Midwest, announcing that Columbus indeed had a skyline, damnit. When my immigrant uncles arrived from sprawling Caracas, with its immense buildings rising towards the ever-present fog that sat on the mountains around it, they laughed and for years referred to the Leveque Tower as an erection in the middle of Ohio. “Dat is not a building, it’s a boner in da middle of Cowtown” my Uncle Pedro would laugh every time we passed underneath it. But near the base of the Laveque Tower, just a block away sat one of the very first large department stores in the Midwest, the Lazarus Building was for many years the destination for all Central Ohio shoppers, until the suburban mall craze of the late sixties slowly stole all their customers, until finally in the early aughts the store finally shook, wailed and finally shuttered its doors for good.     

Lazarus was not only the place to buy school clothes, business suits, furniture, appliances, but it also included fine dining as well as a cafeteria that overlooked a large courtyard in the center of the department store—all seven stories of it,  but perhaps the largest attraction of the store was its annual Christmas showpiece which stretched almost a city block. A massive display of elves, Santa, his workshop as well as hundreds of shiny and glittery presents with giant ribbons, cotton-y snow, and the most fascinating attraction of all aan enormous miniature train that ran the entire block, through Santa’s North Pole village, mountain ranges that echoed the great Alps of Europe and eventually to the small towns that dotted Ohio. This was Christmas for many of us.       

Bela’s living room 2022

My grandparents lived just a few miles north of downtown in the sprawling Linden neighborhood that crawled up the east side of Columbus to the far northern end of the city. Their smallish cap-cod was much larger when I was five years old than the broken down house, in the broken down section that my grandparents lived when I drive by it forty-five years later, but I recall the fireplace that was always crackling and popping along with the Christmas muzak the continuously played from the clunky 1960’s stereo console that stood next to my grandmother’s leather back chair sitting opposite of her husband’s Laz-E-Boy. After arriving at my grandparents, sitting in front of the fireplace, drinking hot chocolate while my grandparents slid into their nightly haze of Johnny Walker Red. All the while the Christmas tree flickered, blinked, and amazed me.

Lazarus Christmas Display circa 1950’s—from The Columbus Dispatch

The next morning, always a Saturday, my mother would shepherded  us in the orange four-door Datsun and drive us to Lazarus where she would bitch and complain about the lack of parking, hustle out of the car and there was snow, always the thick, grimy snow of cities that caked itself against rubber boots, rubber tires and the bottom of the heavy metal car doors of the nineteen sixties and seventies. We would go into that large department store full of mystery and awe and  head towards the real Santa and the tiny shed that sat in the middle of courtyard, I would cry and bray as we stood in line, triggered by my older brother’s crying as well—because, hey-if he was crying Santa must be an intense dude. My mother would set us on Santa’s knee, a knee what was probably as soiled with pee as the downtown alleys that many of the homeless drunks would duck into. After the bawling on Santa’s lap my mother would buy a bag of popcorn from the Woolworth’s next door and we would walk the block, mesmerized by the display of Christmas that stretched longer than a child’s imagination could travel, farther than the moon and back, much father in fact—into the space dust of the universe. This was something to behold, the elves, Santa’s North Pole village, the longest (by far) miniature train set that looped and climbed snow caped mountains, multiple tunnels and bridges that went over frozen rivers. And the presents, soooo many presents—what were in those shiny perfectly wrapped packages? 

Lazarus circa 1980’s photo from The Ohio History Connection

In a few years we landed in Springs, Long Island, a village just a breath away from East Hampton and our house sat near the end of long road—the back yard woods filled with ticks, box turtles and poison ivy that kept us occupied for the one glorious year we lived there. Being from Ohio means that whenever you are near a mountain you have to climb it and whenever you are near a ocean you have to either swim in it or stand next to it and think about swimming in the mystery. Thanksgiving of nineteen-seventy-four, after filling ourselves on Turkey, oyster stuffing and mounds of mashed potatoes my mother packed us into that Datsun and we drove the two miles to the beach, which was empty of course with a bitter wind blowing in from the Atlantic. The only people who would be on the beach on this fridgid November would be some idiots from Ohio. We picked up as many shells as we could and when we got home, my mother washed them out, popped popcorn over the stove top, poured out a few bags of cranberries and opened up several packages of contruction paper. There, on the floor around our Christmas tree she weaved string through the shells, cranberries, and popcorn and strung them on the pine tree branches. She helped our little hands glue the construction paper together, making a multi-colored and no doubt adorable pathetic chain that most like stood like an open little boy’s zipper on that tree, but it was our homemade chain. 

 At night after tucking me in, she would sing in her Joan Baez-y affected voice and trill out Silent Night as she tucked the covers in around me. “Honey, right now Santa is flying over the ocean, he will be delivering presents soon, but you need to sleep.” I thought about how cold the old elf must be, “Mom, he’s going to be cold when he gets here.” “We will have hot chocolate for him, I promise, and carrots for the reindeer.” In my head a visions of Santa peering down into the swirling waves as snow pelted him and I drifted off to sleep. In the morning there were presents, even though we were poor there were plenty of them under that cranberry and shell covered tree and it was magical, in the seams of my life as I fold into my memories I realize that only a mother can unwrap a child’s imagination.

Stretch Armstrong with only moments to live.

As I got older, and many of things that I believed in as a child morphed into the logic of a man, one that watched people live and, of course die, of having my own children watching the amazing world that beams from their smiles, and eyes, always their eyes—I realize that it is easy to dismiss the wonderment of life I may feel. This past spring, the last spring of my mother’s life as her mind flickered and words escaped from her throat before she could voice them she sat in her favorite chair looking out at the bluebirds, cardinals and woodpeckers that flew in front of the large picture window to feed on an endless supply of nuts and seed. My mother gazed over at me, as I tried to coax memories from her—the same way that she opened my imagination so many years ago, in the way that only a mother can do-she smiled at me and asked, “Do you remember the Christmas tree we decorated on Long Island, we put the shells in the tree and popcorn? I loved that Christmas, that was my favorite tree ever.” I didn’t remember but I told her I did, because of course I did. 

faded (at seven)

Love and miss you this Christmas mom. 

Tags: Bela Koe-Krompecher, Christmas Stories 2022, Columbus Ohio, Jenny Mae, Jerry Wick, Lazarus Building Columbus, WPRB