In December of 1957, I spent my first holiday season away from home, working in Colorado Springs, Colorado, about 1,100 miles from our family’s apartment in Chicago.
I had just graduated from the University of Missouri and was in my first job on a newspaper. It was an exhilarating time for someone who, by the time he was 14, knew what his life’s calling would be. I arrived by train, and quickly spent $100 to buy my first car, a beat-up 1952 Buick. Within two weeks, I found a room on Nevada Avenue, where I stayed with both the football coach at Cheyenne Mountain High School and my boss, the sports editor.
Before then, the only mountains I saw were in picture books, the only horses and cows were on movie screens. Everything was new and life was what I thought it should be.
If you are 22, on your own, and taking a bite or two from every apple dangling from the tree of life, you know the feeling. What’s new and what’s next were the questions which needed to be answered every day.
The Russians would never touch this city. The Army base south of town was Fort Carson. The Air Force Academy, headquartered at Lowry Air Force Base in Denver, was ready to move to a permanent location north of “the Springs’ in 1959. Historical Note: Colorado Springs beat out Alton, Illinois and Lake Geneva, Wisconsin as the site.
NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command which monitors airspace over North America, was located inside a mountain next door to the city. We now know that on Christmas it even tracks Santa on his trek from the North Pole
Christmas week, 1957, included parties and dinners, filling a few evenings prior to the actual holiday which was on a Wednesday that year. The main east-west street of Pikes Peak Avenue with its movie theaters, restaurants and small shops, was awash in bright lights and Christmas decorations.
Eddie’s, a small three-story, bar-restaurant-nightclub, was my frequent go-to place where one could meet, greet and eat. On Christmas Eve, it was elbow-to-elbow with holiday cheer.
However, as a Jew, I knew Christmas festivities were what others did, and my biggest problem was trying to figure out if it our holiday was spelled Chanukah or Hannukah or how many potato latkes I could eat (should I eat) at one sitting.
Christmas morning was cold as only it can be in Colorado. The refrigerator offered nothing tempting except ice cubes and a bottle of milk. Feeling the first pangs of hunger, I dressed quickly and sought something to eat. That was when I discovered every place that should be open was closed. It seemed as if everyone was either home or in church. Almost nothing was moving. In the Stone Age of money (before ATMs) all I had in hand was loose change, and not much of that.
I spent the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon at the newspaper office reading the AP wire and snacking on sweets and chips from the candy machine dispenser in the empty lunchroom. Sometime in the early afternoon the radio sports announcer knocked on the door. He was looking for a paper he had missed and saw me.
“Why are you here,” he asked.
“No place to go,” I replied.
“Come with us,” he said.
I spent most of the rest of the day at his house, watching Christmas shows on television and spending time with his large family. I was an invited guest, and we all ate well. I can’t remember what was on my plate, but you need to know that when asked how much ham I wanted, I passed.
The real story here is that someone alone in a still-strange city, spent the day enjoying food and company in a communal setting with sharing strangers.
More Top Picks Floor Cleaning
In a time when phrases such as “hundreds of hostages,” “dictator for a day,” “unwanted migrants,” “smash and grab,” and “mass shootings” are a woeful part of our daily discourse, we need to understand some values should never change.
Jerry Shnay is a freelance columnist for the Daily Southtown.