Sad Story of Christmas Savings

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
Of the editorial page staff
Published by the StarTribune
December 19, 1959
 
   FATE HAS relieved me of the Christmas shopping problem. The service trades are taking my Yule savings. My wife gets a repaired furnace and my son a repaired car. These are not gifts to gladden the heart. They can’t be wrapped prettily and put under the tree. They are stuff of the every day.
   The fact that such mundane purchases had to be made at this particular time is not my fault, but I’m utterly depressed. When I join the family in carols at eventide tears are difficult to hold back and the spirit of the season is dead inside me.
   I didn’t want it so. This was to have been a truly memorable Yule, with elaborate gifts bought and paid for, and rich in the joy that comes with unrestrained giving.
   I’d had big plans. For a year I had cut down on cigarettes, haircuts and malted milks, depositing the money thus saved in a tomato can in the closet. And each time I added a quarter to my hoard I thrilled way down deep.

   BUT THERE is no certainty in this life. Justice being what it is today, the fruits of one’s toil and sacrifice can turn to ashes overnight on the flaming forge of necessity. The first warning that my tomato can cache was insecure came when the car radiator began leaking. A new pressure cap was suggested. This did no good. Inexpensive repairs never do. A new water pump was installed. This also did no good.
   Before the correct diagnosis was made—a new head gasket—the starter quit. Soon after these repairs were effected, for a princely sum, the muffler went out. So did what was left in the tomato can.

   WHILE I still reeled under this blow, the inadequacy of a recent furnace checkup became apparent. A cold snap in late November found the radiators cold at 9:30 p.m. My wife went to bed to get warm, leaving me at the mercies of an electric heater while waiting for help.
   The next three hours weren’t the worst I ever spent but they were far from the best. The heater was more hazard than help. It knocked the lights out four times that harrowing night. And while hunting and losing candles and scrounging for fuses I yearned for those simple days when one could get heat from coal and illumination from kerosene lamps. One was not beholden in those times to technicians who gave out with gobbledygook about compressors, switches, coils and filters.
   The furnace went sour again a few days later, too. It was Sunday, of course. We always hire help at overtime rates. The sewer, for example, never backs up save on the Sabbath.

   BUT SOME good came from the travail. The scrap lumber in the garage was spreading out so far it crowded the car. I burned the stuff in the fireplace—wood that I cannot burn when we have guests. My wife has the silly notion that the presence of old boards and rotten fence posts on the hearth robs the festivities of tone, particularly if nails are protruding.
   My garage is the neighborhood repository for used two-by-fours, railroad ties and shingles. Neighbors turn the stuff over to me with great shows of magnanimity, as if they were giving me their shirts. I lack the nerve to tell them to get rid of their own junk.

   TO SUM UP the glad tidings, my Christmas shopping has come to twice the anticipated cost, with nothing to show for it. The fact that I’ve insured my loved ones transportation and heat—gifts better than fine gold and just as expensive—is small solace.
   There will be a few goodies in the stockings, of course, perhaps a new shirt and belt for my son and a kerchief for malady, but so much less than I had led them to expect.
   I hope they try to understand.

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