THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 25, 1994 TAG: 9412220167
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 09 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY F. RICHARD QUIBLE
LENGTH: Medium: 98 lines
I noted with great interest Ronald L. Speer's narrative of Christmas in ``The Good Old Days'' in the Carolina Coast on Nov. 24.
I, too, have memories of at least one Christmas in the Sand Hills of Nebraska, and of the first seven years of my life in Long Pine.
I remember a decorated pine tree in our living room. My sister, my brother and I helped decorate it with strings of popcorn (popcorn was plentiful in Long Pine, as were pine trees), and paper chains that we kids colored with crayons and put together.
I remember silver tinsel but I can't figure today how we afforded that for we were not a wealthy family.
There were no lights on the tree. There was no electricity in Long Pine in 1934.
I don't remember being cold, except when visiting our unheated, ``two-holer'' outhouse, and when jumping into the feather bed upstairs with the only heat provided by one register in the floor. The kerosene heater, in the living room, heated that room well, but not much more.
The kitchen was always warm, though. Mom cooked on a kerosene stove, and on Saturdays, she would leave it on after supper (in Nebraska, it was breakfast, dinner and supper) for our weekly baths in the galvanized washtub.
I remember Mom pouring hot water into the tub from a kettle off the stove, and I remember being warm, and by myself (apparently the washtub was not large enough for all of us).
I don't remember which of us was first, or which of us was last, or who emptied the tub. It didn't matter to a 6-year-old.
I remember Mom and Dad worked hard. Neither was formally educated, although Mom taught school before she started raising a family. She baked bread and fried doughnuts, that, I later learned, she sold to neighbors in Long Pine.
Dad worked at any job he could find during those Depression years; from repairing watches and clocks at a little shop in the local drugstore to a part-time fireman on the railroad (Long Pine was a railroad town), to cutting and splitting firewood at 50 cents a cord. (He claimed to have made $1.50 some days.)
I remember going with my mother and sister to that little watch shop when Mom asked Dad for two dollars. ``The kids need shoes,'' Mom said.
I remember a lot of good things about Long Pine.
I remember being barefoot in the summer; fishing in Pine Creek with my grandfather; sharing a watermelon with friends and spitting seeds in the yard; gentle summer rains and cold winter snowstorms; an uncle who always threatened to cut off one of my ears (he didn't); kerosene lamps; a hand pump in the kitchen for water; a storm cellar filled with home-canned goods, potatoes and apples; snowdrifts above my head as I walked to school; Santa Claus handing out little bags of hard candy; and the ``two-holer.''
I haven't figured, to this day, why most had two holes. I don't remember ever having company while I was there, and it certainly was not known as the ``library'' in those days.
No one spent more time than necessary in those things, and the only thing to read was last year's Sears Roebuck Catalog.
As I reflect on my childhood in the Sand Hills, the most revered memory is that of love, family and community. Long Pine, like all towns in Nebraska, was small, tied together with the common bond of survival. Everyone knew everyone; and everyone knew everyone's problems. Except for the usual sickness and death found in any community, most all problems were economic. There was just not much money. And, on Christmas Eve 1934, this was the case with Mom and Dad. Three children, ages 10, 6 and 5, and no money. That night, about supper time, we all returned home from a Christmas service at church, entered the living room, and found the floor under the tree littered with gifts wrapped in Christmas paper and adorned with ribbons and bows. Friends in town had gathered their meager resources and provided ``Christmas'' for a family with three children - gifts for everyone, including Christmas dinner. From that day forward and for as long as our family was together, we always opened gifts on Christmas Eve, in remembrance of that night when three very excited kids couldn't wait. Besides, after that, how could you explain that those gifts didn't really come from Santa?
I remember that we were not children of want. We may have been, at times, children of need, but we never wanted for anything. We were never hungry. We were warm and dry when we needed to be; loved and cherished when we wanted to be; nurtured to believe and know that we were a valued part of our family and our community.
In just 60 short years, the values I learned in that small Nebraska Sand Hills town have changed to the point that my childhood sounds like a fairy tale by comparison. So many millions of young people, today, raised under difficult conditions, have never experienced the delights of my childhood. The key, in my mind, is that I always knew that I was wanted and needed.
If only all children could have grown up in the Sand Hills. MEMO: Mr. Quible's family left Nebraska during the Great Depression of the
'30s that forced hundreds of thousands off the land. They moved east to
Maryland, and Mr. Quible graduated from Virginia Tech as a civil
engineer. He lives in Kitty Hawk and is president of Quible &
Associates, which he founded.
ILLUSTRATION: Photo courtesy of F. RICHARD QUIBLE
F. Richard Quible, the second child from the right, with his family
in 1931. Quible grew up in Nebraska's Sand Hills.
by CNB