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Holidays are a time for family
By Aunt Matilda
Dear Aunt Matilda,
I am a lifelong resident of Northwest Florida, born in Pensacola and raised in Santa Rosa County. For the past 25 years, except for college in Tallahassee, I’ve called Santa Rosa County home. My wife and I decided to raise our family in Gulf Breeze, in part because we know we wouldn’t have a bar on every corner. Now that the county has voted to go “Wet,” what do you recommend we do about raising our kids in a wholesome environment? Should we consider moving?
Signed,
Dry in a Wet Land
Dear Dry,
When I was growing up, my family would get together every year for Christmas dinner at Nana and Peepaw’s house. Nana, my Mother, and all my aunts would bake for a week in advance to prepare a simply amazing feast for us. Turkey, ham, goose (thank God that tradition has died out), collards, sweet potato pie, mashed potatoes and gravy, fresh cranberries—just an unbelievable spread. All my Mother’s brothers and sisters and their families, about 35 or 40 of us, would all show up at Nana and Peepaw’s farm and share the wonderful meal, count our blessings, and enjoy the time with family.
Then, of course, there was Uncle Lenny. Or, as my Father and uncles called him, “That Damn Drunk Lenny.” Every year he would show up at the farm, in various states of drunkenness, and put on quite the show. He’d spill food, break things, try to pick fights, and we could count on him urinating in the Christmas tree almost every year. It was sort of like the kids from Church putting on the play about the first Christmas: you couldn’t tell it was Christmas until Uncle Lenny peed on the tree.
Of course this drunken behavior upset the rest of the family. Hard working, God fearing, good upstanding citizens they all were. ‘Cept, of course, Lenny. Oh, sure, the others would drink a glass of wine or have a pitch from the still from time to time but, like most things, the one bad apple who took things to extremes seemed to ruin it for everyone else.
After every Christmas dinner, we’d head back home and Momma and Daddy would talk about how horrible Lenny was this year. But you know what? The next year we went back. Every next year.
See, that’s where our family was.Those Christmas dinners were a part of who we were and a part of what made our family so strong. Oh, sure, Lenny was a pain in the knickers, but we refused to let him ruin our home and our family. For a month or so after Christmas every year, all the family could talk about was Lenny. But for the rest of the year, all we could talk about was getting together for Christmas dinner at Nana and Peepaw’s.
That’s sort of what we’re going to face in the coming months and years with bars starting to pop up in our home. There’s gonna be some Lennys trying to ruin our beautiful home. May even pee on our Christmas tree from time to time.
But dammit, it’s our home. Bless your pea-pickin’ heart, Punkin’,
Love, Tildie P.S. Lenny got hooked up with a couple of fellas—from New York and Akron—long about ’39 or so and never had a drink again ‘til the day he died in 1951. Not sure what happened up there but all I know is that we had about ten years of a pee-free tree. Until cousin Lenny, Jr. started coming around. But that’s a different story for another day…
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