THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 24, 1995 TAG: 9512210491
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GEORGE TUCKER
LENGTH: Medium: 75 lines
I experienced my most memorable Christmas in 1943 when I was an aviation storekeeper at the Naval Air Station in Clinton, Okla. I had joined the Navy two months after Pearl Harbor and was later assigned to the Norfolk Naval Air Station. In February 1943, however, I was transferred to the Sooner State to help set up a guided missile proving ground in the area made famous earlier by John Steinbeck in ``The Grapes of Wrath.''
I can still visualize that awful place - a tumbleweed wilderness where ``you could always count on being over your shoe tops in mud with gusts of gritty dust in your eyes at the same time.'' By any standards the place was a scenic disaster. At one end of its only street, a nondescript administration building loomed. At the other stood a mess hall notorious for its poor chow. In between were six draft barracks, while a hangar, hospital unit, warehouses and a flying field completed the dreamy picture.
For one who had spent three nights out of four at home during my first naval assignment, it was a radical change, the only good thing was that I wasn't aboard one of the vessels in the Pacific that were then being sunk with sickening regularity. Even so, I managed to take my first Thanksgiving away from home with equanimity since most of the personnel had been restricted to the base for some forgotten reason. But the thought of spending Christmas in the midst of Ma Joad's cheerless territory nearly overwhelmed me.
At that point Lady Luck did me a favor. One of my buddies invited me to accompany him to his parents' home in a small east Oklahoma town for the holidays. With visions of sugarplums dancing in my head, I readily accepted. Since we had a long ride before us, we set out early on Christmas Eve and by late afternoon we were whooping it up around a tinny old piano in his folk's parlor where I banged out accompaniments to raucous renditions of popular songs. Then the telephone rang and a few minutes later my friend's mother handed me the receiver.
To my surprise I found I was talking to the Mother Superior of a local convent who told me that the nun scheduled to play the organ in the local Catholic church for midnight mass had been stricken with peritonitis and had been rushed to the hospital. She had heard me playing in the background and wanted to know if I would substitute for the sick sister. When I said I had never played an organ, she chuckled and replied, ``That won't be any problem. Our instrument is one of those old-fashioned foot-pedaled things with a swell that you work with your knees.''
I protested that I hardly had time to learn the musical score. She said that the priest would be chanting most of the mass and that my duties at the keyboard would mainly be restricted to accompanying a children's choir in several well-known carols. I gave in and an hour before midnight my friends drove me to the beautifully decorated church. After looking over the program, I accepted the challenge.
Soon people began to arrive and it was not long before I was joined in the choir loft by a bevy of rosy-cheeked boys and girls. Then, as an acolyte lit the candles on the altar, I launched into a soulful prelude after which I concentrated on the musical score of the mass in order not to make too many mistakes. Finally, when the time came for the worshipers to walk up to the altar rail to receive the sacrament, I accompanied the youthful choristers in carols ranging from ``Silent Night'' to ``Adeste Fidelis.'' When it was all over, I pulled out all of the stops and gave the retreating congregation an improvised and embellished rendition of Handel's ``Halleluja Chorus.''
It was a greatly gratifying experience, but the best part was yet to come. After thanking me, the Mother Superior presented me with a magnum of champagne from the cellar of the defunct oil magnate who had left his mansion and its contents to her order to be used as their convent.
Since it had not been chilled, we stored the big bottle in the refrigerator until it was time for dinner the next day. And after we had managed to extract the cork - that came out with a bang that reminded me of the Norfolk Naval Shipyard Nine O'Clock Gun at home - we wet our whistles and agreed that the children's singing and my impromptu organ playing had been a creditable attempt to recreate the angel choirs that had echoed over Bethlehem many centuries earlier. by CNB