Thanks...Again: Attaboy, Luther! Another Family Christmas
Posted December 25, 2015, 7:40a.m.
Today, dear ones, I’m grateful for…
Making brownies and granola at 6:00a.m.
A husband with a sense of humor
“The Ghost and Mr. Chicken”—a holiday tradition
Different creation stories attempting to grab onto the mystery of how we got here, and why
This breath, this heartbeat, this moment
What are you grateful for today?
I know exactly when it began.
Before the quarter-mile gravel driveway that opens up to our reveal our land-locked 41.1 acres, before the goats and the barn fire and the peacocks and cutting the path up the Hill and raising Bourbon Red heritage turkeys and that first Leonids meteor shower out by the sweat lodge… Before all of that, we lived in a small townhouse apartment on a street that ran parallel to a set of inconveniently active railroad tracks and an even more active major freeway. Each time the clock spun around to mark the hours of 2, 4, 6 and 10 (yep, twice for each of those), a load of coal or scrap iron would rumble past the crossing, announced by a sustained horn blast that took its job Seriously. It was only a slight gesture on mercy’s part that we were away from the apartment for four of those eight blasts each day, one that evaporated quickly during the dark 2a.m. one. Our first month there was harrowing for our sleep cycles, to say the least.
It was 1997. Patrick was studying environmental technology by day and chopping fresh garlic cloves by night for the pizza place down the street. On Saturdays, dinner was half-price and hot from the oven at the end of his shift. He could have walked home, distance-wise, but the pie would have been cold, so I’d make the five-block drive to pick him up, plant a kiss on his sweet cheek and swap places in the car so he could drive us home while the heat from the pizza warmed my lap. We’ve put chopped fresh garlic on most pizzas we’ve made or ordered since then. Good times, for sure.
We lived there for a little over a year while we rearranged our agendas to include an eventual move to what some city friends still call “the middle of nowhere”, and collected some of our sweetest and also most challenging memories from that final urban chapter of our lives. I think any memory that includes fresh pizza made by the one you love will always be in the top five on the “sweet memory” list. Patrick, being the gift that keeps on giving, added homemade cinnamon rolls to the half-price pizza dinner menu on the only Christmas Eve we lived in those narrow train whistle-blasted walls. I brought a copy of “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken” to the mix, and on that winter night in 1997, a tradition was born. We rocked that video old school on the VCR, and still have it in a Rubbermaid tote somewhere in the attic. Each Christmas Eve since, cinnamon rolls and Don Knotts are nonnegotiable on our to-do list of holiday activities.
If you haven’t seen the film, didn’t have the privilege of growing up in the 60’s and 70’s, you have my sympathies. No life well and truly lived should be missing this classic cinematic gem, and we still shake our heads regretfully as we acknowledge that Mr. Knotts was cheated out of his Oscar in 1967. In an attempt to help soften the blow for him, we created an elaborate trivia game that includes such brain-benders as “what is the population of Rachel, Kansas?” and “Recite the incantation uttered outside the old Simmons mansion by the town’s all-female occult-worshipping group.” Bonus points if you can also name how many times this incantation is spoken in the film. Make no mistake—we’re GAMC hard-core.
My sister Peggy and her family have lovingly, if not enthusiastically, embraced this quirky Christmas Eve observance, making sure their copy of the film (on Blu-ray DVD; we’re so over VCRs) is out and near the television when we all troop over to their place for good food and happily chaotic family conversations that tumble over one another out of genuine love and affection for the news and humor in each other’s lives. Not two minutes into the film’s opening credits and someone will shout out the iconic “attaboy Luther!” (another line that pops up most opportunely throughout the film, but only as a disembodied voice. I don’t even think the closing credits give credit to the person honored with hollering the words). Our dad loved that line a lot, as remembered movie scripts go, and would spontaneously drop it into whatever he was talking about at the moment. We always echoed it back to him, giggling as only 60’s tv show-raised children can do. Add another item to the “sweet memory” list.
This year is different in our present Christmas day circumstances, but that wouldn’t be new for us (except for the overarching ache of the pandemic, of course). Patrick and I have spent more than a few holidays in our own mutually-adoring company, so we’re adapting to that same arrangement today, banking on the hope that, as the Queen Mother said in March, “we will meet again…”. And when we do, the cast of The Ghost and Mr. Chicken will join us. Gathered family members will find their respective spots on the couch or floor in front of the tv, keep pens and trivia question handouts nearby, and wait eagerly for the first “attaboy Luther!” to ring through the family room.
How many times is that line hollered? You’ll just have to watch the film and find out for yourself.
And don’t forget the cinnamon rolls.
Merry Christmas, dear ones.
