You write a column for a community newspaper delivered on Christmas Eve — and the week of Thanksgiving — and think, well that’s not bad but no one’s going to be reading much of their Webster-Kirkwood Times on busy holiday weeks. But you write them anyway because that’s what you do, just trying to find some nuggets of joy in a difficult year.
And then this happened: This week, I got notification from the National Association of Newspaper Columnists that two columns I wrote for the Times won second place in the category of “General Interest-Print.” A bit bittersweet, because of the subject matter. But I’m glad to be participating in local journalism, and that still matters. Here’s the announcement, along with a link to all the winners and their work.
And here are the winning columns:
Mom wanted us out of the house. It was Christmas Eve 1973, with four kids under 13 underfoot, along with food to prepare and gifts to wrap. She had that look in her eye, the one that said, “Cross me and die.”
So dad packed us in the car and drove downtown to pick up his mom, our grandma, and then another hour to a nursing home in Jerseyville, Illinois. It was not how my 10-year-old self expected Christmas to start.
I could count on one hand the number of times we had visited our 91-year-old great-grandmother, Cora Cummings. We just didn’t get up there that much. All I knew was that on Christmas Eve, we were walking into a small-town nursing home, a place that smelled of ammonia and despair.
When we entered the room, my dad was the first to greet her. My grandma sat on the bed and held her hand. Us kids sat on chairs and the window ledge, fidgeting while the grown-ups talked.
The visit lasted less than an hour. As we got up to leave, I remember approaching the bed with trepidation to kiss her goodbye. I was expecting the cold, leathery hands; I wasn’t ready for kind eyes filled with warmth and tears. They were more than I deserved.
By the time we got home, Mom was in full Christmas mode. The holiday commenced, as usual, although I can’t remember what toys were under the tree the next morning. It would take years to realize the gift of Christmas 1973 had already been bestowed, and it was one that would resonate a lifetime: four generations in one room.
Why this story on Christmas Eve 2020? Because there’s never been a year like this, a year that taught us presence is like oxygen and connection is restorative. It took a global pandemic for that to finally sink in.
And loss. That day would be the last time any of us would see Cora Cummings. She died three days later. Infirmities, her obituary said. My dad would recall his grandmother as vibrant and active until she broke her hip that summer, the incident that sent her to the home for the last months of her life.
Cora’s oldest daughter, my grandma, would die three years later. Heart disease, her obituary said. Knowing what I know now, a big piece of her heart was broken that Christmas Eve.
Cora’s grandson, my dad, would live another 47 years, until this one. Pancreatic cancer, his obituary said; not the virus that’s made this such a horrible, awful, no-good year. A footnote to a historic time, and now three of four generations gone.
Meanwhile, us fidgety kids have a couple of generations of our own — a thread from that nursing home room that spans three centuries and includes not only two pandemics, two wars and economic hardship, but prosperity, laughter and love, too.
Life goes gloriously on.
The Frisco Bell would have started ringing on Tuesday at the afternoon pep rally at Kirkwood High — its high, happy clang resonating through the halls.
The clang would have continued into Wednesday at the pep rallies and chili suppers. It would have been heard Thursday morning at breakfasts, then later that day from the back of a pickup truck as it made its way through the streets of Kirkwood and Webster Groves. And for the winner of the Turkey Day Game, the Frisco Bell would have clanged for hours on end into the weekend, its joyous sound heard in your streets, its reverberations felt in your soul.
There’s a reason a train bell clangs, instead of tolls or knells or chimes. The Frisco Bell was cast for a purpose — to serve on a steam locomotive on a train line that originated in St. Louis through Webster and Kirkwood and on to points southwest; to herald and announce, beckon and call and signal that here it comes and there it goes, again and again.
“It is a very distinct sound,” said Kirkwood High School Athletic Director Corey Nesslage, who holds titles as both an administrator and football dad. “To see the boys take ownership after the game and ring it, it gives me chills. We ring the heck out of it.”
Once you’ve heard that clang in your ears, its reverberations reach to your soul. I don’t think it’s overstating how much that sound means to these two communities, nor is there any way to sugarcoat its absence this year.
Turkey Day isn’t just a football game and the Frisco Bell isn’t just an old train part. To participate in this holiday tradition at any level — from the players to the pep bands, from the cheerleaders to the fans, from the business owners to the alumni who can’t stay away — is to be a part of something bigger than yourself.
I may not have grown up in Webster or Kirkwood, or in the tradition of Turkey Day, but I know about football and what it means to a community. I have heard the bell clang. And while it may be silent this year, that doesn’t mean it’s not resonating. It is. It most certainly is.
Because somewhere off Essex Avenue in Kirkwood or just off Elm Avenue in Webster, there’s a kid whose stubby fingers are desperately gripping a football and begging someone to play catch in the backyard. Somewhere in Glendale there’s a kid who can’t stop doing cartwheels. In Rock Hill, a kid is asking for a drum set for Christmas. In Des Peres, there’s a kid who draws football plays in a notebook.
And that happens again and again, year after year, both inside and outside the limits of two great communities. Because joy has no boundaries and community is who you happen to be near on any given day.
And the Frisco Bell clangs on, to herald and announce, beckon and call. I bet you can hear it, too.
