La Prairie Christmas

I stood in the back seat leaning over the front, too excited to sit even if there was room. We were going to the Christmas program in the 1938 Ford; Daddy, Momma, Grandma, and Grandpa, and my sister, Bonnie. The taste of Ipana toothpaste was in my mouth, the smell of Daddy’s Rose Oil hair pomade in my nose, my hair barrettes firmly in place, and my toes pinched into my Sunday shoes. This was the night we had worked toward since Thanksgiving. This was the ultimate in show biz. The 12 of us students at La Prairie were about to present the annual Christmas program to the community. I was so nervous I felt close to throwing up! Throwing up was no laughing matter, as only two years ago, my calm quiet sister had turned pale and thrown up right on the stage. This was a family touchstone to which everyone nodded sagely and smiled. The family was good at hiding anxieties, but any of us were capable of tossing our cookies when stressed. I heard my parents tell me to “settle, now, Con!” But there was no way I could settle on such a night in December with Christmas only days away and the program ahead.

And as we came over the last hill, there stood the school, the lights shining out of the four south windows across the snowy schoolyard. We never saw the schoolhouse with the lights on except at Christmas and again once in the summer during the board meeting. My! It looked like a cathedral! Finally, we were parked and Momma had her picnic basket and we were ready to go in. I wanted to show Momma and Daddy where to hang their coats, forgetting that Daddy actually went to this school 20 years ago and they had been to every school program from “the year one.”. I wanted them to look at the school Christmas tree—ah, there it was just sparkling on the library table. (Well, maybe not sparkling exactly, but standing sort of toppling to the east. It was a cedar, a less rusty cedar than the others out in Walters’ pasture. It was sitting in a pail of sand, and it lifted its prickly branches to show the paper ornaments made of crayoned paper, chains made from Big Chief tablet covers, and a few pretty glass things we each brought from home. Bonnie and I carefully placed gifts beneath its branches, because we’d drawn names, and shopped McLellan’s dime store for presents. We had a special present for Miss Carlson as well.

Miss Carlson greeted us looking so lovely in her Sunday dress, with nylons and high heels! Her blond hair was done fancy, and she looked just like a movie star. I’d never seen a more beautiful lady!

The school smelled unfamiliar as the women folk set out sandwiches on wax paper covered trays and placed cake and pie on the library table near the tree. Someone was making coffee and the air was rich with coal fire and coffee. There were wooden folding chairs in the aisles between the three rows of desks, and across the front of the schoolroom was the stage with a wire strung all the way across and the stage curtains threaded on the wire. The curtains were a faded, red paisley cotton made years before and stored all year in the tin cupboard to keep them clean and mouse free. They were as far as I could see the most elegant, glamorous curtains ever made. The far north part of the curtains had to be left open just now so the wood/coal stove could radiate heat to the rest of the schoolhouse. We could hardly wait til we could close those curtains and hide behind them.

Then Miss Carlson stepped to the front of the room and gave a little welcome to the audience, and said, “Class Get behind the curtains, now!”

We rushed stumbling and blushing to the stage and she pulled the curtains to hide us. Norma struck a chord on the piano, and Miss Carlson pulled the curtains back to expose us. We began singing Christmas carols. At first we sang hesitantly, thinly. By “Joy To The World,” we had hit our mark, and were belting out the songs with gusto. The coffee burbled. Our parents were smiling! Christmas was coming! Oh! Bliss!

As the program opened, little kids said their “pieces”. These were learned at home. The kids came up, bowed and recited a couple of lines to applause, and rushed blushing to Momma’s lap. When I was 4, I was given a piece to say. “I’m just a tiny tot, but I’m not too young to say, Have a very merry Christmas day!” When the teacher had asked us to recite, I thought she had called my name, but she’d called neighbor, Donny. When I got to the stage, there was this dumb boy spouting his stupid piece—so I pushed him! Nobody ever allowed me to forget this social error. But now I was a mature 7 years old, and Donny no longer lived in the community!

Then I was in a skit for which I needed to don a costume. I went back by the intense heat of the stove, and struggled into a big old dress of Momma’s and a sunbonnet and waited. The big kids were doing skits now. Then, Joyce, Kleyla, Bonnie and I were in “The Naughty Mouse”. We were old ladies in rocking chairs telling about our brave exploits as young women; fighting Indians, bobcats, snakes, and so forth, when a mouse was to run across the stage causing us to leap to our chairs screeching and crying. Then a little boy was to come and catch the mouse. The mouse came from Woolworth’s and was a wind-up toy that we broke long before the big night. We attached a string to it, and Wimp was to pull it across the stage. Somehow it got fouled up and no mouse at all appeared. The effect, we figured was good enough.

Then the curtains were shut as Miss Carlson brought in the pasteboard and tissue paper fireplace made from her teacher’s desk. As the curtain opened, Tommy crawled out from under the desk and sang, “Up On The House Top”. Last year, he had sung, “All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth.” Tommy in his little bib overalls, his big brown eyes, and earnest soprano voice was the epitome of cute. I just hated that he got the solo. After all, I knew those songs! I coulda been the star. But, Tommy always got extra applause. He was actually GOOD!

Then Kleyla and the boys sang, “Daisy, Daisy” with responses, and Joyce and Tom did their “Doctor, Doctor can you tell, what will make poor baby well?” There were more skits and poems. At last it was about over, and Miss Carlson called us back to the stage to sing, “We Wish You A Merry Christmas.” The curtains closed on us and the applause (almost unbearable) began.

Momma and the other ladies uncurled themselves from the school desks and set about getting the lunch set out. The men folk went outside to smoke. We were complimented and flattered about the quality of our program. There was a terrible noise out side—crashes and sleigh bells and shouting! And then here he came in the girls’ hall door---Santa Claus!! I ran to Momma and hid my face in her neck in terror. I, who had told all the kids there isn’t any Santa, it is just your Momma and Daddy! I who never talked with Santa—well, here he was looking right into my black little heart and knowing if I was good or bad. I wanted to just DIE! He went about handing out sacks of candy. Brown sacks with marshmallow-filled chocolates, ribbon hard candy, peppermint candy canes, and salted peanuts in the shell were in each sack.

“Don’tcha want your candy, Connie?” he asked.

I took my face out of my mother’s neck and without looking at his glorious face, I took my sack of candy. Momma set me down and brushed my skirt straight. “Now you sit up and act like a big girl!” she admonished. I did.

Miss Carlson handed out presents from the tree. She gave me a big box with little tiny color books, follow the dot books, and paint books. It was the most fun gift she could have imagined for me. My name was drawn by Lowell, and he gave me a glass chicken on a glass nest filled with tiny colored candies. It was the most glamorous gift I ever saw!

And now it was over. The sandwiches had been eaten, the cakes cut and the coffee drunk. Momma packed up her basket and the fire was tended by the men folk. All over. An almost unbearable thought except Christmas was still coming—no school. There was still much to look forward to! Oh, bliss!!

All the way home, Grandma and Grandpa talked of what a wonderful program this had been and certainly Bonnie and Connie were the stars. I sat on Grandma’s lap this trip, and although it was just a mile or so, I fell asleep there and woke as she set me aside to get out of the car. I hoped someone would carry me to bed, but then, it was Christmas, and I was a big girl now!

There has been no La Prairie School since 1950; no Christmas program, no gathering of the community in the schoolhouse during that last week before Christmas. Indeed there are no children in those four sections of land. The farmsteads are abandoned, torn down, farmed over. Last time I drove by the vacant eyes of the schoolhouse stared out at a soybean field.

There was, however, in Walters’ pasture just across the road, a particularly green cedar tree waiting … waiting.

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