christmas part 2

the earliest christmas i can remember was in the house on river road.  you need to understand the layout:  there was a front yard with two buckeye(horse chestnut)trees planted by my grandfather. in front of the house, was a huge glob of concrete that, when my parents had the money, years later, turned into a porch with an awning.  until then everyone used a small side porch to enter the house on the American Legion side of the house-which went into a small hallway-turn right and you were in the eat in kitchen; turn left and you were in the living room.  back to the front door; when you opened it, the living room was to your immediate left.  facing straight ahead was the steps going up stairs;turn left and the bathroom(no shower) was at the end; before that was two bedrooms one on each side. one bedroom was my parents and the other bedroom was shared by bill and myself.  until I finally left home for college, I never had my own room till I was a sophomore.  the reason it is important to know the layout was because Bill and I would hang our Christmas stockings from the front door  hinges.  and every 10 minutes(it seemed like) we would take turns getting out of bed, on Christmas eve, to see if the stockings were filled by Santa: but no matter how much we tried to stay up and keep checking, they never were filled-which meant Santa was not there yet and no presents were under the tree-which was in front of the living room picture window.  of course, when we awoke around 6 AM, all was well.  After seeing what delights were in the stockings and under the tree and some breakfast, it was get dressed and run to grandma's house to see what Santa left there.  One year it was 2 electric train sets;  one was an old fashioned locomotive with smoke that came from the smoke stack, created by a few drops of 3 in 1 oil.  the other train set was a trolley car that went on a straight track till it hit a roadblock at the end and it would reverse direction and go back and forth forever. it was a 3 track Lionel while the other was an American Flyer set-both today would be worth thousands. Another year it was two new Murray bikes-24" for me and a 26" for Bill.  Another time it was two a-little-bit better than a toy-accordion.  Everyone assumed I took more interest than Bill so I ended up taking accordion lessons in New Kensinton, at Groboski's Accordion Studio-across the river and about 7 miles away.  My mom got tired of driving me every week, so for a quarter, me and my full size accordion(which my folks eventually bought for $475.00-they never let me forget the price) -we would board the bus on Brackenridge avenue, and I usually got home when it was dark. New Ken was a gangster town, small, but still run by the mob.  Back to the trains: Around 1962, the locomotive set twas in the garage/barn at the house in pymatuming Lake.  A man seen it a week before and came back and offered my dad $600.00 for it. Unfortunately, he considered it junk and threw it out during the week!  anyway, Christmas time was magic when we were little;  as we got older, the gifts diminished with the reality of a Santa Claus fading away.  Oh well, such is childhood.  By the way, the owner of the accordion place had a woman who was from Russia: she was drop dead gorgeous with should length shinny black hair-and I had a crush on her.   Iwas 10 years old!  My first love;