A memory is a strange animal.  A memory is like a fingerprint.  Everyone has one but no two individuals have identical memories of the same event.  Some memories are fuzzy around the edges while some are as sharp and vivid as if they had been videotaped and replayed before our own eyes on wide screen surround sound 3-D film.  Time does not always proportionally have an effect on memory recall.  I can remember all the details of dropping my shooter on the floor during grammar school at Roberdel and surrendering it to my fourth grade teacher just like it was yesterday.  Yet, I can spend ten minutes trying to remember where I placed my cell phone the night before.  Thank goodness I can remember my cell phone number.  The more I age, the less now and the more then, I can recall.

Joel Bailey once asked his website readers to recall their favorite Christmas as a kid and send to him their personal account over the internet.  His request was an extremely tough task for me.  It was not hard for me to remember back that far although it was a long time ago.  The difficult job was narrowing my choice Christmas to only one.  I could not accomplish that job so I just sent Joel five stories on my five most favorite Christmases.  A memory is a terrible thing to waste.  In my opening statement, I said a memory was a strange animal.  That animal would be a bear.  Sometimes a memory will hibernate deep in the cold past like a bear does in the winter.  Sometimes someone else’s recall of a place and time can be like a warm spring day for an old grizzly.  It will awaken a memory buried deep in a memory bank that has hibernated for years and comes to mind in instant replay.  Jane McCracken Mercer instigated such a reaction in me with her Christmas recall on Joel’s website.  Her Christmas memories of the neighborhood grocery store run by her widowed grandmother awoke my hibernated Christmas memory of a Rockingham neighborhood grocery long ago.

The summer I graduated from the eighth grade I went to work for Mr. Bob Crouch on Saturdays at his neighborhood grocery store.  I was hired at a daily wage of three dollars.  I also earned all the Mountain Dews I could drink along with a home-cooked meal by Mrs. Katie Crouch (Bob’s wife).  Mrs. Katie was a teacher at L.J. Bell, the city grammar school.  The store was a small two room building.  All the groceries were on shelves behind a room long counter.  The back room held wooden crates of ten ounce empty drink bottles.  I spent the first hour sorting the weekly collection of bottles.  All the soda route salesmen delivered on Mondays.  The next hour in the back room I spent cleaning eggs.  Mr. Crouch had his own laying hens.  All the customers stood in front of the long front room counter and called their grocery needs by memory or off a written grocery list.  As an item was announced either Mr. Crouch or I retrieved each off the shelves behind the long counter.  When the list was completed, I then called the items out as Mr. Crouch rang each up on the cash register and I packed into a cardboard box.  By the summer of my senior year, all my hard work had almost doubled my daily wage.  I was knocking down five dollars a day.  However, I was still only working one day per week.  The money I spent; it has been long gone.  The memories I made will last forever.

The customers, not the money nor the work, made the memories.  One customer I will never forget was an elderly black lady.  She was the type lady one would want caring for his child, a true Christian lady.  The lady existed on a small, limited income but she was rich in character.  She had a one-of-a-kind first name.  This sweet, petite lady’s first name was Nicey.  After waiting on her every Saturday for three years I had to finally ask, “Ms. Nicey, how did you get your name?”

“My mother had us in church every time the doors opened.  The last task she did every night before she cut out her light on her night stand was to read her Bible and pray for her children.  Bob, I awoke my mother on Christmas morning with labor pains.  Mother told me she looked around later that morning at all God had provided.  All my brothers and sisters were healthy and all had a small gift under the Christmas tree.”  Ms. Nicey added with a smile on her face and a twinkle in her eye, “Bob, Mother told me God gave her a special gift-me, a healthy baby girl born on Christmas Day.  The day had turned out to be so nice that she decided no other name but Nicey would do for me.”

The last ninety days for me have been unlike any other ninety day period in my life.  On August 13th which happened to be on a Friday, I fell at work on a motorcycle and broke my right collarbone.  On September 23rd, my oldest daughter delivered my first grandchild.  The delivery was via C section and the baby was two weeks early.  Grandpa had his arm in a sling and could not even hold the baby.  Woe is me!  On October 21st, I stopped in the barber shop for a haircut.  My barber was at lunch.  I went behind his chair to get a business card.  I became entangled in his chords, fell, and broke my right hip.  I spent eight days in the hospital, three and one-half weeks as an in-house 24/7 patient at a physical rehabilitation center, and am presently an out-patient at another rehab facility.  I anticipate returning to work in an early to mid-January time frame.

The Christmas spirit of Jane’s grandmother’s small neighborhood grocery reminded me of the Christmas spirit of Ms. Nicey, the sweet, old black lady at Mr. Crouch’s small neighborhood grocery store.  I am blessed. I am recovering from two broken bones and have my health.  After three daughters, God gave me a grandson to enjoy for the Christmas season.  As I look around, everything is nice.  Jane’s memory awoke one of my precious memories of living in Rockingham, North Carolina-a small textile town in the South in the ‘50s & ‘60s. I hope everyone has a nice Christmas!