Our memories come in all shapes and sizes. I’m sitting here sipping my tea and wandering around in my mind. A Christmas Story. There are many, but today I’m mindful of how Christmas was back in the 1940s. World War II was over and America was settling down to business as usual. You see, it was quite different back then.

December rolled up on the calendar and special mail-order catalogs were to be found in the homes of the lucky kids whose mothers shopped at Montgomery Ward’s, Sears & Roebuck, or J.C. Penny stores.

Not everyone had accounts with them, but they kept a generous supply of Christmas catalogs under the counter if a kid could sweet-talk the sales clerk into letting them have one. They were marvelous!

We quickly whipped through the “other stuff” to get to what was IMPORTANT … the TOYS!

Page after page of things to entice every little girl and boy were there. We’d pore through the catalogs until they became dog-eared, folding down the corner of a page where something we HAD to have was displayed. In the event our not-so-subtle hints didn’t work, we would find a pencil and circle the item we found that would satisfy our hearts’ yearning.

Meanwhile, things in downtown Alpena were not remaining static, either. Places like Mr. Huycke’s The Toy Shop, 116 S. 2nd Ave., sold appliances, but, during the holiday season, stocked up with a good supply of toys.

Montgomery Ward’s at 109 N. 2nd Ave. devoted most of their second floor — reached from inside by a large, open staircase with railings that weren’t much good for sliding down because of the balustrade at the end, and another stairwell on the opposite wall, which was not well-lighted and avoided by us smaller kids. Wards had a grand display of most anything we had seen in their catalog.

But the Blue Ribbon Place of Honor went to M.A. Cohen Hardware store at 333 N. 2nd Ave.

Mr. Cohen had a love affair with trains. Every year, he would set up his tables and the whole diorama, where electric trains wove in and out, over bridges, through tunnels, belching smoke and shrieking their whistles, much to the fascination of the many youngsters who gathered ’round the display. We were pretty well-behaved, too, if I might say so. We didn’t try to touch any of the figures or cars or other things on the train tables.

It was a yearly extravaganza for all to enjoy. In addition, Mr. Cohen also managed to clear a good-sized section of his store of its mundane stock and the hardware store became a toy store, if only for a month.

From the stores where kids could look at toys, the annual city Christmas Party took center stage.

I think it was usually held on the Friday or Saturday evening closest to Christmas! The party took place down at Memorial Hall, which was the venue for most of the entertainment in town at that time.

Kids would head there from all over the community, some with their parents and others with siblings and friends. The doors opened and we were treated to a show, some live entertainers, and cartoons. Then the star of the show, Santa Claus, came in, and the kids went wild.

Once it was over, each child was given a “penny candy paper sack” filled with a cupful of hard Christmas candy.

We headed home, our cheeks puffed out with a piece of rock candy, to dream of the Big Day that was taking forever to arrive.

The houses still looked pretty much like they did any other day of the year, because most families did not put up the tree until Christmas Eve. Alpena was a town where European and Eastern European families carried on their religious traditions.

Many saw the four weeks before Dec. 25 as a time to prepare your mind and house for the Holyday. So moms and dads had the dubious pleasure of hustling the kids to bed as early as possible on Dec. 24 and bringing in the tree (where did they hide it?!?).

After getting it upright and secured, they began the task of stringing it with lights. These were NOT the lights of today. When one bulb was loose, no lights. When one bulb burned out, no lights. You could spend ages trying to find that sneaky, lousy, recalcitrant light bulb!

Then they finished putting on the ornaments and unearthed the hidden Christmas presents to put underneath. Hopefully, any assembling of toys was already done.

Exhausted, they crawled off to bed to be greeted in probably four hours with the news that “SANTA WAS HERE!! Wake Up!”

Merry CHRISTMAS!

— Kathleen Melville-Hall , Alpena