More Christmas Pasts

After officiating a Junior High double header at Delphos, I zipped back to Celina and got in 2 games of Dartball at the opponents place, Bethany United....another average to poor night for me, but we won 2 games of 3, and Sam had a pretty good night for his first games of the year, leaving with a .429 batting average.  We make up a snow out, and finish up the first half of the season next Monday at home....maybe the season's second half will be kinder to the team, and I can move my sluggish batting average above the current .309.  I have not batted below .300 since my first full season some 16 years ago, when I hit .286...since that time I have been between .350(the 2007 season when my back was out for most of the year) and .491, my 1 batting crown, to go with 3 runners up, and 4 RBI crowns.

The predicted 4 or 5 inches of snow, was downgraded to 2 inches and some ice, and we ended up with no snow, and a spitting of ice pellets...it now looks like the expected/predicted snow of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day is being downgraded as well...meaning we will probably be stuck with a gritty, dirty, snow on the ground, rather than the White Christmas that looked like a lead pipe cinch a few days ago....O' well, time for the Billion Dollar equipment and the connected talking heads at The (useless NBC owned) Weather Channel, and AccuWeather change their collective minds.

Christmases on Coldwater Creek Road____

Patricia, Anissa, and I, moved back to Ohio in 1980, and promptly rented a house south of Celina located on the Andrews Farm along Coldwater Creek Road.  It was(and still is) a ancient brick farm house, that was built by the family back in the 1870s.  Cool with little or no need of Air Conditioning in the Summer months, and cold and windy in the period from December through March...the kids spent 10 years there, living in the wide open spaces.   Anissa was a year and a half when we moved there, Sam came along in December of 1981, and the youngest, Hal, came along in April of 1984...so for the most part, they "grew up" that decade of the 1980s we spent out no the farm...we moved into town in the fall of 1990.

The winters on Coldwater Creek were brutal, especially those of the early and mid 80s...the winter seasons turned more mild as the mid decade turned towards the 1990s.   Shortly after Sam was born, and a few days after Christmas 1981...I returned home from my Morning Drive broadcast shift at WCSM Radio, and found a pool of ice throughout the kitchen...with the kids at the baby sitters and Patricia at work, the furnace shut down, and with temperatures well below zero, the aging pipes couldn't take the cold, and burst....The Andrews put in an entire new heating and pipe system, and we moved in with mom and Kelly for about 2 weeks.  Mom never complained, but I'm sure it wasn't pleasant for her, and being the independent person I had become, it wasn't for any of us....but we could have been stuck in a motel or worse.  So we were appreciative of the place to stay.  That winter of 81-82 was the first of a string of really brutal winters on the farm.

Those 10 Christmases however, were enjoyable...the kids were into "toys" and board games, and it made it fun for all of us....even with the snows piling high around the house and barns.  I cannot remember each and every Christmas by the year in which they occurred, but I know the kids looked forward to them each year....those are the years, bikes, toys, and dolls, that are the most fun.  Far from being "rich", we always had enough to give the kids enough to keep them happy, well at least they sure seemed so, back in those Christmas Days spent on Coldwater Creek.

Games tonight at St. Marys, then we will celebrate Sam's Birthday a few days late with a supper and ice cream cake at home later.

More Christmas Stories tomorrow...back later>>>>

Photos-The Winters and Christmas Holiday Season during the early and mid 1980s were snowy and brutally cold on Coldwater Creek Road...they were also memorable.  Anissa visits "Santa" in 1984...Hal checking out the tree and presents in 1985 at 20 months, and 6 year old Sam in 1987, with one of his board games (Jeopardy) that interacted with TV.  He was a game show junkie, and could play along with the interactive boards from the time he turned two years old...he was a game show whiz way before his school years.