As it turns out, of course, Christmas and road trips are perfectly compatible subjects, at least for Joey and me. For Christmas is a time of driving. For us, not only was there the driving that we usually did from wherever we were (Virginia, Boston, Philadelphia, DC, Nashville) to where we needed to be (Oklahoma City) - long trips that we often made together - but there was also the driving that we did once we reached our destination. As the children of divorced parents, we had at least two different family gatherings to attend, two sets of stockings to open, two turkeys to tuck into, two hams, two rounds of hellos and thank yous and goodbyes. Our parents both lived within a few miles of one another and had gatherings both on Christmas Eve and on the day itself, so it wasn't a matter of going to one family one day and then going to the other the next - it was a matter of being present for both families simultaneously. This required considerable tactical skill and a whole lot of driving, staying as long as we felt we could at one place before making our excuses and dashing off to another. Stockings and breakfast at our mother's, then stockings and breakfast at our father's, then brunch with our mother's family, lunch with our father's, and so on, piling gifts into the back seat and trunk after each stop, growing progressively fatter with each round of stuffing and green beans and fudge, until evening, when we'd either attend yet another family holiday gathering or split up and join our friends for Chinese food or beer.
We didn't mind all this running around - it felt good to be in such high demand - but it could be quite exhausting, especially since Oklahoma City isn't exactly notable for its high population density or shortness of travel times. In Boston I used to joke that where I grew up you can't even go outside to check your mail without driving twenty minutes, and it's certainly true that we couldn't celebrate Christmas without burning through at least half a tank of gas, even if our journeys were confined to a single quadrant of the city.
These peripatetic Christmases made our experience of the holiday unique, something that we shared with one another but not with the other people around us. It made us a sort of double act, this shuttling between two worlds, and on the road we'd listen to music or gripe about politics or catch one another up on books we'd read or traveling we'd done. We could only spend part of Christmas with our mother's family or our father's family, but we spent almost all of Christmas with one another.
He was the only other person in the world who knew what it was to celebrate Christmas between these two families.
As children, before our parents' divorce and for many years after it, we usually broke our Christmases into much larger chunks: Christmas Eve afternoon with our father's family down in southwest Oklahoma, Christmas Eve night at our great-grandmother's for our Uncle Jack's birthday party, stockings with the parents on Christmas morning, brunch at our great-grandmother's, an afternoon spent playing with our gifts, and then an evening party with our maternal grandfather's family. Almost all of these traditions have fallen away over the years, as generations pass and the family evolves, but there are some remnants still. I hadn't been to Elgin (where my dad grew up and where his parents lived, and where Joey and I would usually stay for a few days, as children, in the run-up to Christmas) on Christmas Eve for many years, but Kate and I found ourselves there this year, more or less by design.
We had driven down to Archer City, TX, to visit Booked Up, an antiquarian book compound owned by Larry McMurtry, author of Lonesome Dove and dozens of other books. Archer City is the (thinly fictionalized) setting of one of McMurtry's first books, The Last Picture Show, and it is where the movie of the same name was filmed in the early 1970s. There's not much left of the town - a solid stone courthouse still dominates the square and the Dairy Queen (where McMurtry once read Walter Benjamin) is still serving burgers and shakes, but the oil fields that fueled Archer's growth are nearly tapped out and the wealthier inhabitants (including McMurtry himself) have now scattered across the county into state-of-the-art ranches, leaving the town square to crumble and rust. At least half of the downtown business district consists of Booked Up itself, which is spread over four buildings surrounding the square and has an absolutely astounding array of rare used books on every conceivable subject. There's only one cash register in the store, in Building 1, and if you find something to buy in one of the other buildings you have to carry it across the street or across the square to pay for it. It's basically Disneyland for book lovers, a dusty, withering town out on the West Texas plains, neither on the way to nor on the way from anywhere in particular, where you can take your pick of first-edition H.G. Wells novels, nineteenth-century pulp adventure books, shelves and shelves of French or Italian or Portuguese books (in translation or not), eighteenth-century broadsides, and so on. It is one of my favorite places in the world, and it was one of Joey's, too. I believe the first time I was there was with him and our father, although in subsequent years Joey and I tended to go down separately, with friends or significant others, and I have no doubt we could easily have spent a weekend there together, giving each building a few hours of our time by day and exploring Wichita Falls, the nearest metropolis, by night. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Kate and I do just that one of these days - perhaps, indeed, in lieu of taking the kids to Disneyland.
Anyway, on the way back from Archer City we swung through Elgin to visit my Uncle Mike and his family, who live just outside of town. I took Kate past the house where my grandparents used to live, drove her through downtown Elgin (such as it is) and pointed out the Christmas decorations (wire contraptions of light and tinsel in the shape of Christmas trees) that the town has been affixing to the utility poles since before I was born (although the decorations themselves have changed over the years), and reminisced about Christmas Eves spent eating and opening gifts in Elgin and then racing back to the city for Jack's birthday party. This Christmas Eve, we visited a bit with the Elgin family and then raced back to the city for Indian food with my mother, father, and grandmother, the latter regaling us with stories of her efforts to break herself of an apparently quite debilitating peanut-butter addiction. It was a good way to spend that day.
Books also featured prominently on Christmas Day itself, when we held the First Annual JPD Holiday Book Swap. We gathered at my grandmother's place in the morning with a couple of Joey's friends and a bunch of books, brought by ourselves and sent by FOJs (Friends of Joey) from out of town. The idea was that we'd each contribute a book that we associated with Joey in some way - something he'd read, something that reminded us of him, something he'd given to us, etc. - and swap it for something else. Each of us would then commit to read the book we'd received over the next year and maybe find a way to discuss it with one another, either next Christmas or sometime during the year. His Washington, DC, friends are going to do something similar in January. It seemed like an appropriate way to mark his absence and to tie all of us, his extended family, together - a good way to share some memories, some fruitcake, and a tear or two - and I hope we manage to keep it up for a few years. For me, at least, it means that I can continue to buy him presents for Christmas and gives me an excuse to poke around a bookstore for an hour or two with him in mind.
Not that I really need an excuse.
Another amazing tour of your heart and soul.
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