This is the final chapter of a holiday series that started Monday, November 27th.

Doug was out of his chair and out the side door from the kitchen like a bullet.  In the driveway, he looked at the passenger side of the Country Squire in total disbelief.  A moment later, Bobby ambled out.  He had a beer in each hand, one for himself and one for his older brother.

“What the actual hell, Bobby?” Bobby remembered the look and tone from years ago.

“Sorry, man.”  He replied.  “It was slick up in Alpine.  We had an issue getting to the cabin.  Have a beer.  It’s Christmas.”

The fact that his kid brother was so nonchalant about it seemed to only make it worse.  Doug  knew if he kept talking it would only escalate the situation in front of the crowd that had gathered in front of the window inside.  Even the kids were up from the basement and had their noses pressed up against the glass of the side door.  Dana came outside, pulling on her thick wool coat to guard her against the bitter cold.  She walked around to the passenger side of the Country Squire for a look.  “It’s only a car.”  She looked up at Doug as she rubbed his back for comfort.  “Come in and play cards.”

Thankful for the female perspective, Bobby reaffirmed the point.  “It’s only a car, Doug.”

“So true.”  Dana glanced back at her young handsome brother-in-law.  “We’ll talk about the clutch in the Mustang later.”

The next day was Christmas Eve and nobody left the house.  Grandma Nolan was in the kitchen all day long, every flat surface covered with baked goods, preparation for the Christmas meal.  The kids were in the basement going through boxes of vintage toys that had been Stan, Doug, and Ann’s when they were small.  Grandma never got rid of anything.  Doug, Dana, and Ann were upstairs in Doug’s childhood bedroom wrapping gifts for all the kids, letting Christmas carols take the place of conversation.  Crockett was curled up on a stack of quilts in the corner, his earlier fascination with snow replaced by a longing to be back in the warm sun Texas.

Watching all the kids open gifts that evening, especially Ann and Don’s, gave Doug a feeling of satisfaction that replaced the anxiety that had been building up regarding Ann and her family. He felt like there was hope. They were good boys. It warmed his heart to see his own kids embrace those of his sister. Maybe there was a bond. His mother finally came in after finishing the last of the dishes and sat down. She had a glass of wine in her hand, only the second or third time he remembered ever seeing her have one.

After everyone had opened their gifts, the wrapping paper thrown away, and bows and ribbons had all been gathered to reuse another time, Stan got up and went up to his room upstairs.  Nobody expected to see him till breakfast the next morning.  But he returned a few minutes later, his arms full of wrapped boxes.  A couple of them covered in Christmas wrappings, others in brown paper sacks that had been cut up.  A couple in yesterday’s newspaper.  None had ribbons or bows, or even tags.  Yet, Stan knew exactly who got each gift and he handed them out with purpose.

After the last person received their gift, Stan nodded for them to all open what he had handed them. In each box was a brand new pair of Mason shoes. Each person’s shoes fit them like a glove. Or maybe, more like Cinderella’s slipper. No two styles were alike. Nobody knew if the shoes were from some type of secret stash Stan had kept for years, or if he’d sent off through the catalog. When Grandma Nolan slipped hers on she said, “They’re so comfortable. They’re perfect.” She wore them into the kitchen to make coffee.

Two days later, as they loaded everything back up into the dented Ford wagon that smelled like dog puke and tuna inside, the family was quiet.  Each of them were lost in their own thoughts about travel, family, Christmas, and priorities.  Kyle was replaying the scene viewed from the crack of the bathroom door in the cabin over and over in his mind.  There was a melancholy about it being over, a sense that nobody was ready to go back to normal.  As the Country Squire made its way south and found warmer weather, the milk that had been spilled when the car hit the snowbank began to thaw and sour, replacing the aroma of tuna casserole.  Doug just shook his head.

That spring Grandma mentioned in a letter to Doug and Dana that Bobby had been drafted.  She said that when he got back from his enlistment and tour overseas that he and Betz had plans to get married.  The letter that followed a month later mentioned that Betz found out she was expecting.  In August the phone rang.  Grandma Nolan never called long distance, only wrote long letters of straight, flowing  cursive using elegant language.  She told Doug when he picked up the phone that Bobby would never be coming home.

Before the end of the year, Stan would call.  

The trip to Disneyland got put off another year so Doug and Dana could go back to Michigan to settle the estate. The kids stayed with Dana’s folks. The estate sale and getting his mother’s house ready to sell was tough on Doug. Pulling all the quilts and blankets off the Sunliner in the garage and putting it out in the driveway with a FOR SALE sign on it was the toughest part. Stan did what he could to help, but he was an emotional wreck.

Stan stayed in the house till just before the new buyers moved in, then packed up his Olds Dynamic 88 and moved back to Wisconsin. He’d reconnected with Nikki through letters, then phone calls. Nikki had gotten remarried shortly after Stan moved back home to Michigan. The man she’d married had abused her and the marriage didn’t last. When Stan made his way back to Chippewa Falls he got an apartment near Nikki’s. They never married, but what they found in one another was enough. He got full time work at a hardware store and she continued nursing.

Kyle would always think back to that Christmas in Ferndale as the most perfect one of his youth. It was all the imperfections that had made it so. The holiday he would compare all the others to. When he married and moved away to Austin and only returned to Fort Stockton to visit his own parents for the holidays, he had an even better understanding of what that Christmas must have been like for his dad. Going home to somewhere that wasn’t really home any more. The feeling of being in a place he loved, a place that made him who he was, but a place that was forever in the past. One he could never really return to. Kyle’s kids asked him questions about the house and town he’d grown up in, the same way he’d asked his dad when they spent Christmas in Ferndale.

Kyle got the Country Squire as his first car, taking it off to college still smelling like a toxic combination of aromas from Christmas of 1969.  He and his fraternity brothers added some of their own.  The wood graining on the front right fender had never lined up properly where it had been repaired at Frontier Ford, “Home of the Straight Shootin’ Deal”.  The back bumper was forever bent out slightly from where the hook of the Sno-Shu had grabbed on to dislodge the beast from the snowbank Uncle Bobby had embedded it in.  Every time he got in it he thought about Uncle Bobby.  And Betz.

Kyle interned at the Stockton Telegram-Dispatch, during summers while getting his degree in journalism. Perry Silverman could see the kid had talent and used his connections at Heard Publishing to get Kyle a job once he’d graduated. In the decade and a half that followed, Kyle covered all sorts of new car launches. As such, he was not at all surprised to be covering the launch of the ’96 Taurus, Ford’s newest version of the best selling car in America. The magazine he wrote for, Road & Motor, sent him to Detroit to do the cover story for the September, 1995 issue. Wanting to put their very best foot forward, the PR Department provided Kyle with a Rose Mist Metallic Ford Taurus SHO while he was writing the article and interviewing the engineers and designers who brought the concept to market.

Even for a Ford man, from a Ford family, the initial reaction to the ovoid covered Taurus sedan was similar to the one his dad had seeing the dented Country Squire for the first time. But it grew on him. The Yamaha V8 under the hood made him a believer. The color, not so much. But he applauded their effort and the story he banged out on his Smith Corona to fax to his editor indicated Ford had a winner on their hands. He asked if he could keep the Taurus for the weekend before flying back home to Austin on Monday. Spending some time on the internet, still in its infancy at the time, Kyle was able to track down Uncle Bobby’s girlfriend. She lived in Royal Oak, just up from Ferndale, and seemed genuinely happy to hear from him when Kyle called her. They agreed to meet for lunch in Ferndale to catch up.

The restaurant on Woodward was a stone’s throw from his grandmother’s old house that he hadn’t seen in over a quarter century. Not since that Christmas. As those things go, the closer he got to Saturday, the more he regretted having called her for lunch. What in the world did they have to talk about for an hour? When he told his wife what he’d done on the phone the night before, she said, “It’ll be fine. There’s a reason you were able to find her. Let me know how it goes.”

Driving past the house where his grandmother lived, Kyle probably felt just like his father had when they pulled up in the Country Squire for Christmas. Everything was so much smaller than he remembered. How did all those people fit in such a small space? There was a Crown Victoria in the driveway. “Somethings never change,” he chuckled to himself.

At Como’s, the place they’d agreed to meet, Kyle worried he wouldn’t recognize Betz. He needn’t have. She was a lovely, middle aged woman who still looked gorgeous. She smiled at him as though meeting a friend she hadn’t seen in a long time. “I could pick you out of a line-up, to be sure,” she said as they made their way to a table. As soon as they sat down she reached into her purse and pulled out a handful of pictures.

“This is JR.  Your cousin.  It stands for Junior, as in Bobby Junior, but I always called him JR, so as not to intimidate the only father he ever knew,” she explained.  The young cousin he’d never met looked just like Uncle Bobby.  A handsome man.  How could he have not been?  “He’s at Michigan State.  Getting his Masters.  If we’d have set this up earlier, he’d be here for lunch.  Sorry it didn’t work out.”

“Don’t be,” Kyle responded.  “It was spur of the moment.  Didn’t even know if I’d be able to track you down.  Maybe I’ll get to meet JR on another trip.”

“It’s a shame the distance has kept everyone from being close.  We’ve all lost out on something,” she noted.

They talked about that Christmas.  “It was all Bobby talked about before he left.  I was always glad he went off with those memories.  It was some measure of comfort at a time when comfort was hard to find.”

Betz told him about the man she’d married when JR was a toddler. “A great guy. Really was. He was the best father to JR that anyone could have ever been. We were married till JR graduated high school. Then we went our separate ways. He told me he just couldn’t compete with a ghost any longer.” Betz had a smile on her face, like there were no regrets. “We remain friends, even get together for dinner now and again. And when JR comes home from college.” Kyle thought it was bittersweet, a flavor that increases with age.

“You know, your dad was awfully good to me when JR was just a baby,” she continued.  Kyle wasn’t sure what she was referring to.  “When Grandma Nolan died, she left a sizable estate.  Not huge, but between the house, the contents, the savings, and a small life insurance policy, it was a tidy sum of money.  When it was split up, your father split it four ways rather than three.  He gave me the part that would have gone to Bobby.  He didn’t have to.  Stan and Ann both agreed to it, as well.  They told me to use it to be sure JR got a college education and whatever we needed.  He and your mom would always send some cash at Christmas and on JR’s birthday.”

Of course, Kyle never knew any of that.  It helped explain why the trip to Disneyland never did happen.

“I lost touch with Ann years ago.  Is she alright?” Betz asked.

“Don was killed in a drunk driver accident when the boys were small,” he told her.

“I’m sorry,” Betz said.

“Don’t be,” he replied. “It was a one car accident and he was the driver. Probably worked out for the best. My mom and dad got Ann and the boys to move to Fort Stockton not long after. A new start. Texas was good for Ann and all three boys.”

They laughed about the Mason shoes everyone got that Christmas.  “I still have mine!”  Betz laughed.  “I could never get rid of them.  They’ve gone in and out of style three times since then, but I swear they are the most comfortable shoes I’ve ever worn.”

“How did he know exactly what size everyone wore?” Kyle asked.

“Who can say?  He just had a gift for such things,” she laughed.  “We all have gifts.”

Kyle glanced at his watch.  It had been almost two hours since they sat down.  They’d been talking the entire time.  You know,” he said.  “It’s the gifts that are completely unexpected that are the ones you remember.  Like the Mason shoes Uncle Stan gave everybody.  Like the inheritance you got that you weren’t expecting.”

“Or like taking just a minute longer than needed in order to pick out a sweater to put on in the dead of winter inside a cold cabin?” Betz said.  The smile on her face was barely noticeable, the twinkle in her eye much more obvious.  Kyle turned a shade of red that rivaled the Mustang Boss 429.  Rather than say anything that would embarrass either of them, he changed the subject.

“Whatever happened to the Mustang?” he asked.

“I kept it for a year, then sold it.  It didn’t work well with a new baby.  I think I got $1,800 for it.  Probably worth ten times that now.”  Betz laughed at the thought of it.  Kyle didn’t want to tell her what a low mileage 1969 Mustang Boss 429 was really worth, even one that’d had some clutch issues.

Eventually the check came and they had to say goodbye, each having a list of things to tend to as the holidays drew closer.  Kyle picked up the check.  Betz gave him a kiss on the cheek.  They talked about keeping in touch.

Just last week Kyle and his wife pulled into the driveway in his Cactus Grey Ford Ranger. Always a Ford man, even all these years later. Their two grown daughters were in the back seat. The trip back home from picking them up at the airport had been long, but somehow still flew by quickly. The granddaughter in between them fell asleep out of sheer boredom.

“Why didn’t you ever tell us this story before?” the oldest one asked.

“I don’t know.  Never thought about it,” Kyle responded.  “Guess you never asked what my favorite Christmas was as a kid before.”  The five of them got out of the truck, grabbed their bags from the back of the Ranger, and headed into the house.  The girls were welcomed by the smell of baked goods and a pot roast in the crock pot.   Kyle’s wife had been busy in the kitchen the last two days.  The girls noticed the small things only put out at Christmas that they’d forgotten about.  Each one brought back a rush of memories.  

They each made their way back to the bedrooms they’d had when they were kids.  The rooms each felt smaller now.  Maybe it was just the quilts stacked everywhere.

If you’re enjoying the series, or the blog in general, consider buying the Captain a cuppa Folgers to help offset the costs of keeping it running. Happy holidays.