Our catch phrase is on its way.
Dear Fellow Earthlings,
My fifth birthday (on January 10, 1953) marked the beginning of a very eventful year. For one thing, I took a trip with my mother and two younger siblings to Guatemala City, Guatemala, where we spent six weeks at the home of my maternal “grandma” (abuelita, in Spanish -- ) Guillermina Figueroa. How well I remember eating chicles (Spanish, for “candies”) with my Aunt Thelma Yolanda (See Installment 52.), crying when my cousin Marianella (a year younger than me) made faces at me, being disappointed when (on a visit to the zoo in Guatemala City) my hopes of seeing an elephant were dashed -- all they had there was a skeleton of an elephant -- and of being forced to endure a few days without being able to see because I had come down with a case of chicken pox!
I grew very homesick for the toy trucks and cars I had left behind in Illinois – and was so happy when we finally got back to the little house down in the hole next to Route 159, some five miles or so south of Collinsville, Illinois – so that I could resume playing with those toy trucks and cars!
The highlight of 1953 was Christmas, when I received my teddy bear Lucky (who I still have, stored with mothballs in a box in Yokohama, Japan). My Aunt Pat Walker’s father Gib Killinger took an 8mm movie that day. Entitled “Christmas of 1953”, the movie shows 18 of my relatives (including me) gathered at my grandparents’ home (a few years later, to become my parents’home) on Hollywood Heights Road, enjoying the lovely weather on that Christmas Day. It was sunny with temperatures in the lower seventies. During that era the typical weather on Christmas day in Caseyville, Illinois would have been either sunny or with gray skies -- with snow either falling and/or on the ground, nighttime low temperatures of about 25 degrees below zero (-4 degrees Celsius), and daytime highs of 35 degrees (about 2 degrees Celsius).
You can imagine how happy all of us were to be enjoyng that springlike weather in the middle of what was usually a long Illinois winter!
Looking at that color 8mm movie film supports the adage, “the good old days”. How pretty all of us looked! And those big smiles as people paraded in front of the camera, hugging, clowning around – just being happy! -- warm the soul!
Steve Walker, Earthsaver and Jingles Creator
© 2013 Steve Walker, The Jingles-The Japan Foundation for English Pronunciation, Summit Enterprises.