This Christmas Eve I was holed up in the little shack with my wife. She was decorating cookies with those little silver balls and scattering red and green sugar bits. I looked out the window and I couldn't believe it, there was a Cadillac in my front yard, one of those 1959 jobs with high tail fins, looking like a spaceship. No wonder, it was my old friend Willie and someone with long hair and a beard looking like Jesus in the passenger seat! I went out and, lo and behold, it was Tumbleweed! Willie is 20 years older than me but we were always fast friends. I greeted him with, "How is my partner in crime?"
(Now you may ask, how did he get that kind of description? There is some property I know that belongs to a family friend where I had been going to a little fishing pond for about 40 years. I took Willie down there with me around 1995. We came back to the road with a load of fish and unexpectedly met the game warden who said, "I think a crime has been committed here!"
We looked at each other, uh-oh! The warden went on to explain, "The owner of the property called me and said someone was trespassing and now I see you with a stringer full of fish! Let me see your fishing license."
We stared at each other again, uh-oh!... Well, now you see how we became partners in crime!)
Seeing him this Christmas Eve, I had to ask him, "Willie, where did you get that spaceship?" He said, "It landed last night with this alien sitting next to me!"
Of course, this wasn't hard to believe considering Tumbleweed always said he came from the star system Sirius or sometimes the Moon (only when it was full, though!)
"Well, come on in by the fire and have some Christmas cookies and apricot brandy," I said.
The three of us sat down in the rocking chairs I have surrounding the fireplace.
"Jack, what did you do for Thanksgiving?" Tumbleweed asked.
"Wife and I went down to Laredo, visited the old San Agustin Catholic Cathedral that we got engaged in on Thanksgiving Day 15 years ago."
"I didn't know you were Catholic," Tumbleweed said.
"I'm not, but there's something magical about an old church like that. A spirit of faith and hope lives there, after centuries of the faithful's prayers I believe. On top of that, the priest had a guitar and sang some beautiful Spanish songs!"
"No Turkey?" Tumbleweed asked.
"Sure Turkey enchiladas!"
Tumbleweed explained he had Thanksgiving dinner with the Salvation Army in Austin this year while passing out blankets to the homeless. Willie, having a huge family of seven children and many grandchildren, always holds the holiday at his cozy cedar cabin. He brings in two huge old doors and puts them together with sawhorses for a table and has a feast! I have been to a couple of those dinners and with turkey drumstick in hand, he is the king of the day!
"Tumbleweed, what are you doing for Christmas Eve? " I asked him.
"I'm spending it on your couch!"
My wife, always cheerful, said, "Tumbleweed, so glad you invited us!"
We all laugh and my wife whispered to me, "We don't have a gift for him! He has all that bamboo that grows by that culvert cave of his. Get me that big machete and I'll wrap it up for him."
Right on cue, Tumbleweed went out to the spaceship and brought in a bamboo wind chime he made. Tumbleweed makes bamboo benches, wind chimes, fishing poles and other crafts from those stalks and sells them on the street. "Merry Christmas!" he shouted.
I look over to Willie who whined, "He gave me a bamboo birdcage with no door!"
Tumbleweed retorted, "Why do you need a door, old man? Haven't you ever heard the saying ‘Free as a Bird’?"
Willie quipped, "Yes, but I don't need to remember it. All I have to do is look at you!!!! I got to go. I'll take this alien encounter of the third kind with me!"
"Tumbleweed, I thought that Cadillac was yours?" I asked.
"Nah, Willie picked me up on the way back from Austin. I was thumbing; I slept in his car."
My wife asked, "Tumbleweed, we thought you were staying with us?"
"Nah, you left the door wide open. Time to fly away with this old coot!"
In unison, we all yelled out, “Merry Christmas!”
While our two dear friends fired up the spaceship, I thought of all the families and friends who celebrate the Gratefulness of Thanksgiving, the Joy of Christmas and the Anticipation of a Wonderful New Year ahead.
From the little shack with Love:
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
