Tragedy + Time – A Christmas Reflection

GUEST COLUMN

By Randy B. Young
Correspondent

1970 was my “Blue Christmas.” Chaotic and blue.

On Christmas night of that year, with the morning’s gifts scattered about our Springfield, MA apartment like fresh kill, my family left home and made our way toward a trip to Chapel Hill via an overnight train—a train because grand trips by rail were already going out of fashion in 1970 (Arlo Guthrie would make famous the Steve Goodman tune lamenting the demise of passenger trains in, “The City of New Orleans”). Dad apparently wanted to spare all of us the Holiday rush on the highways.

Also, a train, because a train was a toy that dad had asked Santa for as a child and it never arrived. It was like a consummation of all he wanted but never received through all of the Christmases of his broken youth.)

Finally, car trips over the same route could be taxing to my parents, who might either face heavy traffic during day or endure fatigue riding at night and be car-lagged for days. This way, they supposed that they might arrive in North Carolina rested, having enjoyed a quaint mode of travel.

Sadly, the desires of youth are seldom made manifest and are often less than gratifying. During the initial car ride to the train station, Dad snapped on the Dodge Dart’s AM radio, and Lynn Anderson’s voice crackled “I never promised you a rose garden…” in the chilly air. There could not have been a Christmas carol more emblematic of the first leg of our trip south. 

What my UNC-graduate parents had presupposed to be a quaint way to travel southward quickly evolved into an overnight-mare. As I and my brother Steve were hurried through the mania of New York’s Grand Central Station on Christmas night in our pajamas as we were treated to all of its unsavory sights and odors, it was like strolling through WWI’s “No Man’s Land.” In a fugue state of transition from one rail line to the next, I remember posters for Broadway musicals (“Fiddler on the Roof,” etc.) about every ten seconds and the alarming cacophony of bells swung by Salvation Army Santas every ten feet.

Once aboard the next train and riding the rhythm of the rails southbound out of New York City, we quickly discovered that this particular train made stops every five minutes between New York and Washington, DC. Further, a devoutly inebriated chap who boarded around Philadelphia promptly threw up in the aisle and then curled up on my parents’ feet and went to sleep there for around 120 miles. All of this was clearly visible and salient for my brother and me. We had a well-illuminated view of the entire debacle, as the passenger cars, for some reason, remained fully lit throughout the depth of night.

When we finally arrived at our grandparents’ house in Chapel Hill, NC, we strode in haggard, disillusioned, and worn thin. The only redemption was through the recalling of stories detailing the disaster that was our transit.

Even the sight of our grandparents’ Christmas tree was initially off-putting. A four-foot, God-awful, silver-blue artificial tree stood proudly in their quaint living room. I imagined that we, as Christmastime visitors to the balmy South, were certainly as out of place in Chapel Hill as that tacky, Smurf-y blue tree amidst the traditional red, green, and gold decorations that surrounded it. Blue was just not a Christmas color.

During our stay on the Hill, however, we chanced by the University of North Carolina’s old Kenan Field House (then, at the southeast end of the stadium) to see the Tar Heel football team pile onto the charter buses to their Peach Bowl trip for a December 30 game versus Arizona State. I snagged All-America candidate and star running back Don McCauley’s autograph. There was no fee; there were no N.I.L. considerations. There was just…class.

Somehow, the Tar Heels in their Carolina Blue sports jackets seemed such a far cry from the muted grays of winter, particularly those of an exile in New England. The ‘Heels lost 48-26 in Atlanta that weekend, and even though we watched the game on a black-and-white TV, the colors of my Christmases since 1970 have always included a bit of Carolina Blue.

A few days later, the train ride back home seemed thankfully uneventful, though unremarkable. Still, the horror show on the trip south is actually filed among the fonder memories of Christmas, proving once again that “humor = tragedy + time.” We never made another family trip by train. Dad did buy my brother and me a train set for Christmas six years later, though I think it was as much for him.

On the snowy drive back from the train station in Springfield, Massachusetts to our apartment, the radio again bristled again with “Rose Garden.” Perhaps the “roses” had never come as promised, but who needs roses when you have indelible memories of an adventurous “Light Blue” Christmas…and Tar Heel great Don McCauley’s autograph.

A Dartmouth College graduate, Randy B. Young first worked as an award-winning advertising copywriter in New Hampshire, then in communications at UNC for over 30 years. He maintained an award-winning newspaper feature covering Recreation and Exercise in the Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Orange County. Retired and living in Chapel Hill, Randy continues to write for regional publications both locally and in New England, and his book, And the Stars Flew With Us, is available through Amazon and at independent bookstores. He coaches track at Chapel Hill High and has a photography business, Pierless (sic) Photography. This reporter can be reached at: Information@TheLocalReporter.press