YOUR SAY: HOLIDAY HOMETOWNS
So many San Diegans come from somewhere else. For those who do, what do you miss most about your previous home during the holiday season? What are you most happy to have left behind?
A visit home reminds one what is missing
I was born in Niagara Falls, New York, at St. Mary’s Hospital during the Korean War. In my formative years, I can remember this time of the year through nostalgic eyes.
Falls Street was all aglow with Christmas decorations, as were Main Street and Pine Avenue. Beir’s department store would have elaborate Christmas-themed window displays replete with artificial snow scenes and mannequins performing “fun” activities. Beir’s was the high-end department store of Niagara Falls, a Western New York Neiman Marcus. Its catalog was at least 1.5 inches thick! Three stories of blissful shopping experience.
Also on Falls Street (within a stone’s throw of the majestic Niagara Falls) was the most beautiful movie theater I have ever attended. Frank Darabont’s The Majestic paled by comparison. The Cataract was a recycled vaudevillian building with vestiges of a bygone era — brass railings that supported you as you made your way downstairs to the “powder room,” mohair seats that were dual-spring-activated, walls that displayed fresco art works using the “dab” method, and a phenomenal rotunda ceiling that Michelangelo would have wished that he had painted. It seated 1,600. The foyer had the most beautiful fountain, located right next to the concession stand.
This movie palace had plenty of lights and vertical signs. It had a large screen and simply gorgeous interior. It was torn down in 1970 as part of an urban renewal project.
The rest of Falls Street housed The Strand, a less ostentatious movie theater, a drugstore with a food counter and at least six phone booths in the back, and The Alps, a fantastic steak house. I returned home for my 50th high school reunion three years ago. Gone was Beir’s, The Cataract, The Strand, Singer’s drugstore, even The Alps. All I saw was a casino.
My hometown went from a vibrant, alive and ethnically diverse city of more than 100,000 to a decaying and dying city of 48,000. Who is to blame? The politicians? The lack of foresight and planning?
Or is it something else?
All I know is the town that I grew up in was a beautiful city full of hope and diversity that showed a strong sense of community. What I experienced three years ago had none of these attributes.
I miss my hometown, particularly at this time of the year. I close my eyes and I am 10 years old, walking down Falls Street. A gentle snow is beginning to fall. I walk by Beir’s and note the beauty of the window display as I enter The Cataract, stopping to get some nonpareils and Goobers and Raisinets as I make my way down to my mohair-covered seats to watch a great movie. Gosh, I miss that!
And what I’m glad about leaving is not seeing gray and black snow piles for the months of February and March. And the humidity. And the taxes.
Jack Keane, San Carlos
Chicago is a great place to be from
As a retired senior citizen, I have lived here so long I consider myself a native. However, I am from Chicago. Most of my early growing up was in the suburbs of this great town. My first California winter, I missed the first snow of the season. I missed the flooded tennis courts and baseball diamonds for ice skating. I missed snowball fights and sled rides. I missed the ice-laden tree branches glistening in different colors in the sunlight and dusk with the soft new snow so pretty in the dim light. It was magical to me as a child. I missed all these wonderful, beautiful things.
As an adult, I remember the preparations my folks made for winter: airing the mothball-packed winter coats and clothes, storing the summer-autumn clothes, antifreeze in the car, special snow tires, plastic for covering the screened back porch for a warmer spot to remove snow boots, making sure the shovels and car ice scrapers were ready for use (no snow blowers back then). And don’t forget to store the window
screens and put up the storm windows. After the snow fell, they knocked down deadly icicles from the edges of the roof. Sometimes they had to shovel the roof for fear the weight of snow would cave it in. They worried about the icy streets and the ice-heavy power lines threatening outages. Oh, and that sharp, windy cold blowing off Lake Michigan could freeze you to the bone.
Yes, there are many more chores added to an adult’s to-do list when living in a cold climate. I have decided that as a child, cold weather is great. But as an adult, California is much better. My to-do list is already long without adding all those extra snow weather tasks. I often think, how did my folks do it? I guess they were young. But now I love taking a walk along the ocean waterfront each Christmas Day. I just marvel at this different beauty and how fortunate I am that we moved here many years ago. How lucky I am!
Sharon Smith, La Mesa
The Christmas story was easily translated
I grew up in the Los Angeles area, live in South Carolina, am a sometime resident of Solana Beach and spent 15 years in China. So I thought I’d write down a few memories of Christmas in Shanghai in the 1990s.
My colleagues and I took a rather large group of students from the Shanghai Institute of Foreign Trade to a Christmas Eve service at the Three-Self, or governmentsponsored, church for Protestantism. We met at the front gate, which probably gave the school officials some concern. Fortunately, we left the campus a couple of hours earlier as the two buses broke down en
route. As we arrived at a packed church, we were able to find seats in the balcony. For many students, it was the first time that they attended a church service. Several of them had looked up some of the possible spiritual vocabularies in their ChineseEnglish dictionaries to translate for their foreign teachers. It was one of my most memorable Christmas Eves ever!
Our International Fellowship consisted of consulate workers, businesspersons, language students, teachers and African students completing either a bachelor’s or master’s degree in Chinese. It was one of the few places where I experienced true koinonia fellowship as intended by the Scriptures. We had a tradition of holding a Christmas Eve service. And at one such service, we shared about our Christmas celebrations, customs and experiences either back home or in China.
A young man named Andy shared how he was teaching an English class and the power went out, which was not unusual for Shanghai in those days. So some of his students scrounged up some candles. He asked if anyone knew a song that they could all sing. They all knew “Silent Night” and promptly broke out in the chorus. Then Andy told the class the Christmas story of Christ’s incarnation as a humble baby. Then he proceeded to tell the historical account of Easter of His crucifixion, death on the cross for all mankind’s sins, and resurrection.
Even though it wasn’t the Christmas season, it was his best Christmas memory ever. Jenny, a teacher from New Zealand, told the congregation about the first Christmas Eve from the shepherd’s perspective. Kiwis are very familiar with the shepherding profession, the country being one of the world’s largest producers of wool and lamb.
I also joined an expat choir. We prepared several Christmas songs to perform at various venues, both secular and sacred. We were able to perform in one of the Advent Services at the Three-Self Church. Also, we performed at the British Christmas party. The Puritans refused to celebrate Christmas because it was a drunken affair. The dinner party in Shanghai was no different. Our choir sang the only Christmas song that put the holiday in perspective.
Shangdan jie Kuaile! (Merry Christmas!)
Mark A. Peter, Solana Beach
Some lucky to remain in a winter paradise
Christmas on Coronado Island was, and is, always very special. Sunny weather, Orange Avenue’s lighted mile of trees from the Hotel del Coronado to the bay, sparkling beaches, friends and relatives all around. Not to mention the first-ever electric-lighted outdoor Christmas tree, by Thomas Edison himself, on the hotel grounds.
Mostly Christmas days here have indeed been wonderful, but there were the sad years when my Navy father and later my Navy husband would be absent. Not just on duty — in wartime danger zones when communication home was minimal: World War II and later Vietnam.
I don’t have an actual memory of my first Coronado Christmas. That would be 1928. My parents loved to tell the story of how they arrived to meet here in the middle of that winter from Boston, where my flight surgeon father had been assigned to the first real aircraft carrier, USS Lexington, still under construction when he went aboard.
Once the ship was commissioned, she left immediately for San Diego. A long voyage through the Panama Canal. My mother and I, age 2, came overland by train to join him in Coronado. Direct from freezing dark miserable New England to warm sunny weeks filled with flowers, surrounded by sandy beaches. They would say they had no idea such a winter paradise existed, and from day one declared this precious island would be their forever home. That took some in and out over the years, with both generations, but at 96, I live in the house with a historic designation plaque by the front door that was their happy place.
Over the years, some of the most fun Coronado Christmas times were when Jack Viera and I were here with our sweet little daughter, grandparents and godparents gathering around, carols at the old stone Episcopal church, and time for sand castles and wading just over the Ocean Boulevard rocks.
As the years went on, my mother would remark that the holidays are not happy times for everybody. There are the memories of departed loved ones. I, of course, know that now, but I also know the joy of family, friends, shiny days and warm memories. After 33 moves in 49 years following my late husband, I finally settled permanently in the best hometown ever.
A favorite memory from my island childhood was the year, maybe fifth grade, when there was snow in the Laguna Mountains. My mother packed up Christmas dinner and we drove up there for a white Christmas picnic. To this day, on my annual visit to Julian, I recognize and celebrate the exact spot along the road in the meadow where that happened. Julia Viera, Coronado