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Christmas Memories by A.C. Greene illustrated by Geoffrey Greene |
"To me, Christmas smells like a cedar tree. . . . [which] in [my] part of Texas seldom grows straight or abundant enough to cut and market even for fence posts. But it makes an admirable Christmas tree if one can overlook some of its natural imperfections, or accept them as marks of strength and adaptability. . . . In the town where I was born and raised, everyone drove a few miles south to cut a tree. . . . In that dry, windy country . . . the major problem was to find the one least lopsided and wind-whipped." Thus A. C. Greene, in "The Too-Big Christmas Tree," tells of a Christmas in the 1920s when his father cut a too-big tree and almost broke up the family. Long out-of-print and a collector's item, this story is now coupled with "Christmas Shopping," in which a small boy sets out with his grandmother on his first shopping trip to buy Christmas presents for the family.
"I was just seven years old my first Christmas shopping trip. . . . I went on the trip with my Grandmother Cole, who was our city’s Carnegie librarian and worked downtown and was, therefore, a citizen of that mysterious adult world which went to work. . . . My grandmother and I boarded the little four-wheel trolley on the Fair Park loop —the men who were waiting all tipping their hats and letting the women and children on first. Pretty soon we were bumping and swaying up Sayles Hill on our way to downtown. The ride seemed extremely lengthy and adventuresome to me, although it couldn't have been that drawn-out, even by dinky trolley: the entire streetcar system of our town was barely five miles long."
A. C. GREENE, born in Abilene, Texas, is author of twenty books. He has been a newspaper editor and university professor and has worked in both television and radio. Geoffrey Greene, son of A. C. Greene, lives in New York City with his wife, where he is an artist and TV graphics designer.
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Christmas Memories ISBN 1-57441-017-2 cloth $16.95
LC 96-8410. 6x9. 78 pp. Illus. Publication Date: August 1996. |
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