Roy Exum
Over the last few years, with my parents and the last of my brothers gone, my Christmas pattern has taken a different route. I still get up way before dawn, so I can open presents with the kids and our grandchildren, and there is something special in the fact Harper in now 6 and Ben is 2. Being around young children at daybreak on Christmas morning is as good as it gets.
So it isn’t until later in the day, when I get back to where I live by myself, do I open a pile of Christmas cards and my presents and warm in the memory of each one. Then I take down my stocking from the hearth and discover what is inside is the most fun of all:
* -- Wow! Look at this … the poignant feeling that the children who were in the Woodmore bus crash just weren’t just black children – those kids belong to all of us and the Woodmore community has witnessed over $200,000 in aid come from every neighborhood in town. Once again I am ‘Chattanooga Proud’ and, once again, Chattanooga was nationally recognized by the way we love one another.
* -- Here’s a pile of pictures … Lee Anderson, Johnny Hennen, Hal Morris, Kyle Smith, Mae Bell Hurley, Dr. Jim Creel, Allen ‘Oodie’ Brown, Nate Anderson, George Shuford, Charlene Cook and others who helped me become a better person. I’ll never forget them … what’s the Indian proverb? “Great men must die but death cannot kill their names.”
* -- A “Go Mocs” sticker with new head football coach Tom Arth wearing his bright-gold tie. I hope he realizes what a legendary league he just joined … no, not the Southern Conference but a group of men that has included Scrappy Moore, Harold Wilkes, Buddy Nix, Brother Oliver, Joe Morrison, Rodney Allison and the departing Russ Huesman – what a crowd of winners in every sense.
* -- A tiny street light? Oh, that’s because Huesman’s UTC roommate on the Moc football team was Don Lepard, who is now a genius in the street lighting business. He’s figured a way to put WiFi on street lights and could cover the entire city of Chattanooga with carefully vented Internet access. Put a computer tablet in the hands of every school kid and our education efforts will rise tremendously. I’m just saying …
* -- A toy school bus but wait! It has CARTA written on the side of it! What if we could put our children on city buses every day to augment regular school buses? It would be a boost to CARTA, assure we have professional drivers, and would get the taxpayers a much bigger bang for their buck since we pay for the buses and the schools.
* -- Ah … an old Olan Mills’ coffee cup … every time I drink from it I will remember that Butch and Olan wrote the check for a cool million bucks to spearhead our new Children’s Hospital. They were huge in the Aquarium, we must never forget, and their overall generosity, while quietly shielded from the public, has resulted in more good than you’ll ever possibly dream. Trust me, I loved them forever.
* -- Here are two doll-house sofas! This gave me pause until I remembered our T.C. Thompson Children’s Hospital has no facilities for people whose loved ones are in intensive care or step-down units. Don’t wait until the new Children’s is built … there is room at the hospital if somebody wanted to donate funding for a waiting area in memory of the children who just lost their lives.
* -- A key to the jail. Hopefully I’ll never need it but I need to carry it in my pocket to remind me every day that we, as a community and as a society, must fix our county jail. It will take five years for us to get a new facility but we can attack our homeless problems and our woeful mental illness needs right now. Right now I can point with my finger at “hopeless despair” in our very city.
* -- Here’s another sticker that reads “The Woodmore Six” but it has a big red circle and a diagonal slash through its middle. It is a reminder that we must never forget the six precious children who died in the horrible tragedy; there are many more. Those who survived the crash deserve our unlimited attention, too. Their healing will be demanding and we need to help in any way we can. The need for pediatric counseling is huge.
* -- A baseball cap, red, with the words “Make America Great Again.” So, yes sir, I’m supporting president-elect Trump and am so thrilled over his cabinet choices I am about to split. I read where one pundit languished they lack political experience – that’s the best thing about them! They are winners, I tell you.
* -- An orange. All my life there has been an orange and some Brazil nuts in my stocking. I don’t know why. But here’s the orange.
* -- A teacher’s school bell, with tiny letters “Alling” How cool is that! Kelly and Ted Alling are actually starting a charter school for inner-city boys – Chattanooga Prep – next fall and it may be the most thrilling “gift of love” Chattanooga has gotten in years.
* -- Two thank-you notes, one from Patagonia and the other from Nike, saluting the fact it feels like I’ve spent enough this Christmas to supply a NBA team. I know one from L.L. Bean is in the mail, too.
* -- Here’s a heavy little box … oh, I just love the memory! Ever since I was six I’ve always found a box of .22LR bullets in my stocking without fail. In high school there were 30-30 caliber bullets, too, but always a box of 22s.
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I have scanned as many Christmas decorations as I could find and this anonymous entry from the Internet is the hands-down winner of this year’s The Roy Exum Best Christmas Decoration Wreath.
The contestant explains, “The good news is that I truly outdid myself this year with my Christmas decorations. The bad news is that I had to take the dummy down after two days. I had more people come screaming up to my house than ever; but two things made me take it down. First, the cops advised me that it would cause traffic accidents as people almost wrecked when they drove by.
"Second, a 55-year-old lady grabbed the 75-pound ladder, almost killed herself putting it against my house, and didn't realize it was a fake person until she climbed to the top (she was not happy). By the way, she was one of many people who attempted to do that. My yard couldn't take it either. I have more than a few tire tracks where people literally drove up my yard."
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I hope your Christmas blessings will be as bountiful as mine. And let’s always cherish what Clement Moore famously wrote in his beloved poem, ‘Twas the night before Christmas’ in 1823:
“He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight,
"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!"
royexum@aol.com