Merry Christmas to all of my friends and family!
Tis the season for Grandpa to sit on the couch on Christmas morning and remember a half a century of Christmas mornings. I was looking at the Kyle Hill girls in their Christmas Eve pjs and remembering my own children at that age. I started to tell him to cherish every moment since they will pass so quickly but I know that there is no way to comprehend it.
My favorite gifts were BB guns! I never had a Red Ryder, but I had about every other one you can imagine. The coolest was one that looked like an M-1. Wood stock, adjustable sights and all. I don’t think that I ever had one that lasted a full year. I simply wore them out!
The worst Christmas was spent in Jackson, Mississippi when on Christmas Eve, I came down with one of those horrible twenty four hour virus attacks at Grandma Owens’ and ruined the event for all. (I would have been around six years old at the time.)
One of my funnier memories happened in a tiny farmhouse in Terry, Mississippi. I’m sure it was the last Christmas with Papa Owens. Dad had a tendency to give Dwight and me things that we were too young for. Once we tore them up or lost them, he never gave us another one! This Christmas he made rubber band guns and sling shots for his five and seven year olds!
It was Christmas morning and I was dancing around with little Keith’s toy banjo. Dad was demonstrating the rubber band gun to Dwight. He pulled the thick rubber band back and pinned it under the clothes pin “trigger”. Now what? He looked up and there was my plump little butt parading across the room. Oh, yeah! Whap! That rubber band popped my fanny and I jumped a foot in the air! To Dwight, a whole new form of entertainment had been discovered! 
(Will someone please save me? Grandpa is driving me crazy with his old stories. You know, the ones we’ve heard a hundred times! Nana, tell Grandpa you need help in the kitchen!)
Okay, I’m coming! Just let me say Merry Christmas to my buddies around the world!
Merry Christmas and God bless you!
Grandpa Hal