Home movies.
In the 1950’s and 60’s Dads got a bonus at Christmas. I’m sure those Dads wanted to send that extra money to the dentist. Perhaps they dreamed a dream. A dream of replacing that farting old furnace. New tires for the car……………instead their wives talked them into buying a Brownie Movie Camera.
Christmases on Columbus Street didn’t vary much. We liked our routines especially when they included hot chocolate and no one counting the cookies. You could squirm all you wanted in church because Mom and Dad were barely awake in the pew. Eyes were open but no one was home.
The tree was lit in the living room. The nativity sat on a little rolling cart in the corner. Rudolph and friends skied down snow covered hills under the picture window. Santa filled the tiny little living room with booty picked out from the Sears Wish Book.
All was right with the world.
And, then? The movie camera would come out.
Moving pictures were nothing new. I mean this was the early 60’s I’m talking about. I grew up on a steady diet of Saturday morning cartoons. The Three Stooges. Western after western and a smattering of Lawrence Welk.
But, we’d been trained for still photography. We’d been posed many a time in front of that Christmas tree. I sat sullenly on a big brother’s lap and we were told to hold still! Quit moving for God’s sake! Do not scratch your nose right now! Can you all smile at the same time? Is this hard? You have teeth! Show them! my father would bark at us when he was taking still photos.
We’d been trained to hold still when a camera came out. So, a movie camera? You want us to move? You want us to be animated? This was quite a challenge. Oh, a challenge for my brothers. Me? I’d pretend I knew how to tap dance. I’d wave. I’d get ridiculously animated. My father would eventually say “You! Little Girl! Quit acting like a freaking idiot!”
The movie camera came with it’s own lighting.
I was four years old the first time my father knowingly almost blinded me.
Big bright white lamps were attached to a long stick. Dad held it up with one hand and told my mother to plug it in. A flash of pure white light filled up the little living room.
The room that was the size of a postage stamp.
Three kids dived for cover. My brothers ran from the room. I was posed in my little black rocking chair that Santa had brought me. I tried to rock forward and escape my mother who was kneeling next to the chair. I wanted to hide behind the stuffed armchair in the corner.
I knew it was dark back there.
“We’ll start with Darlene!” my mother said as she grabbed my wrist.
She sat me back down in the little rocker. I tried to look at my father but all I saw was a bright white shimmering gauzy cloud of ozone with his legs sticking out of the bottom. My eyes watered because you’re not supposed to stare at the sun. Tears dripped off the end of my nose.
“Go, Ralph. Film! Okay, Little Girl! Smile! Rock in the chair that Santa brought you!” Mom whispered in my ear as she backed up. She was trying to get out of the shot. My mother was allergic to having her picture taken whether it was still or moving.
I whimpered. I rocked. I wondered where the heck my brothers had escaped to. I wanted to know if they were eating cookies without me.
“Rock harder!” my mother ordered.
It seems the rocking chair had a music box attached to the bottom of one of the rockers. I rocked harder.
“Smile for God’s sake!” my father ordered as he came in for a close up. “Why the heck are you crying?”
The little music box spilled out a song I sort of knew. Hey, I was four years old. I didn’t know all that many songs. But, this one I knew. It was the same tune that my little wind up baby doll played when my mother put me to bed.
My mother started to sing the words to me to encourage me to rock and to smile at the camera. I don’t know why this was so important. The camera didn’t pick up sound.
“Rock a Bye baby, on the tree top, when the wind blows, the cradle will rock…………..” she sang. My mother got to the part where “Down will come baby………..cradle and all!” I guess I’d never listened to the lyrics before…………….I took them as a threat.
I tore out of that lacquered black chair and slid under my parent’s bed in the next room.
I would never sit in that rocking chair again.
I’ve seen the film so I know what happened next. My brothers were led back into the living room by my mother. She got them there by swatting them with a dish towel. Oh, you can’t see her in the 8mm movie. Just the snapping towel.
There they stood awkwardly next to each other in front of the blinking tree. Someone must have yelled at them to “Move! for heaven’s sake!” So, the tallest took a step to the left and pointed to the tree. He waved his hand from the top to the bottom. He was giving a guided tour to anyone that has never seen a Christmas tree before.
The other brother bent down and grabbed a locomotive off of a track. He smiled and showed the front of the train. The back of the train. Both sides of the train. I think he even said Choo! Choo! at the camera.
My father was missing me by this point. I was always good for a song and dance. I would hop and jump down the whole length of the sofa. I was known to give a big bounce off the arm of the couch and land in a fabulous Peter Pan pose with my hands on my hips.
But, I was no where to be found. I was hiding under my parent’s bed. I was sniffing and sneezing up dust bunnies. I was wondering why there was a little girl’s umbrella under their bed with the price tag still hanging off of it.
I had asked Santa for an umbrella and hadn’t gotten one.
That’s when my father turned the camera on my mother. Her hand flew up to her hair. She said something undecipherable in my father’s direction. She did not look happy. And, then her plump white palm came up and covered the lens.
End of film.
growinguponcolumbusstreet 