A Christmas Story.

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I tell this story every year I think, so to those who are bored with it, I apologize. It's just a part of my families Christmas I like to share.

It was the winter of 1958. I was six years old or so, and my mother was about 8 3/4 months pregnant. A few days before Christmas, my father decided he needed to clean the chimney of the old oil stove we used to heat the house. He got his ladder, a bag of bricks, and a rope and went up on the roof, and dropped the bricks down the chimney to knock loose the soot and such. He had done this a number of times I'm sure.

Well, this time, when that bag of bricks hit the bottom, the door to the oil stove flew open and a cloud of black, oily soot rolled through the house.

Now, I don't know how many of you have ever seen oil soot, but it's tiny little bits of almost weightless black grime that has to be wiped up. Trying to sweep it, just pushes it ahead and smears it. I suppose you could vacuum it, but we didn't have a vacuum.

My mother stood there, surrounded with this black, oily disaster. She dropped on her knees, right there in the living room, lifted her hands to heaven and prayed..."Dear God! Just get me through Christmas!"

My sister Gayle was born at 26 minutes after midnight, on December 26th. God got my mother through Christmas! He got her through on her hands and knees, with a soapy, wet rag in her hand, but He got her through.

My mother and father have long gone to glory, but that story comes up every year at our family Christmas get together. I hope it will carry on through the generations. It's just too good a story to lose.

And Happy Birthday Gayle.
 
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