December 25, 2001

Marley is dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. Old Marley is as dead as a doornail.

Things just haven't been the same around the small fiction-writing firm of Scrooge, Marley, and Varley since old Ebenezer went off his rocker and started giving all his money away. Eb is broke now, languishing in one of the union workhouses. Now I am left here alone to huddle by my meager fire and stir the cold gruel in my bowl, searching for that odd bit of beef, that blot of mustard, crumb of cheese, or fragment of an underdone potato which might give me the slight disorder of the stomach that would allow old Jacob Marley's ghost to bedevil me for another Christmas Eve. There is more of gravy than the grave about him.

Thus do I fight off the first specter, but it isn't so easy with that nagging harpy, the Spirit of Christmas Past. She's apt to show up anyway. I've got my cane here, as my osteoarthritis of the knees is acting up again in this damp weather, and I would wallop the dickens out of her if she were a tad more substantial. But it would all be to little effect. Once more I must endure the guided tour....

Ah, yes, here she is now. And off we go. A cold wind blows calendar pages before us as we fly...

...1959 ...1958 ...1957 ...1956...

No children could have enjoyed Christmas more than my sisters and myself. We were middle-class, but our granddaddy in Corsicana, Texas, was the manager of a Duke & Ayres store. (Think Woolworth, or Newberry's.) It was a dark, narrow little 5&10 selling just about anything, so long as it was cheap. There was a candy counter (and I can't imagine why I didn't weigh 300 pounds by the time I was 12), and best of all, a toy department. At Christmas time we got deep discounts. If stuff got damaged, we could usually keep it. I always had plenty of toys, even if I had to break them myself.