Christmas Magic and the Wicked Witch of Michigan Avenue

Christmas Magic and The Wicked Witch of Michigan Avenue

By James C. Dedman

Edited By Daryl Debunhurst

Copyright 2013 James Dedman

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Disclaimer: This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to people living or dead (Except historical figures) is purely coincidental)

Cover Art made with the help of brush tools from:

http://www.obsidiandawn.com

This book is dedicated to Sandy, my long-time conservative friend who thought my Christmas Book this year should be about Christmas, and who cherishes the same memories of Christmases Past as I do, many of which are recorded in this book. The book is set in a time not so long ago when America was still a great nation. I hope it stirs every reader to remember that great heritage and to do their part to restore the nation to the country it once was.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: "It’s the Holiday Season"

Chapter 2: Thanksgiving

Chapter 3: Black Friday

Chapter 4: Choir Rehearsal and Eggnog

Chapter 5: Mistletoe

Chapter 6: "Oh, Christmas Tree"

Chapter 7: The Children’s Christmas Program

Chapter 8: The Living Nativity Scene

Chapter 9: Angel Wings

Chapter 10: "Baby, It’s Cold Outside"

Chapter 11: Christmas Caroling

Chapter 12: "I’ll Be Home For Christmas"

Chapter 13: Christmas Shopping

Chapter 14: The Office Christmas Party

Chapter 15: "The Nutcracker Suite"

Chapter 16: Christmas Eve

Chapter 17: Christmas Dinner

Chapter 18: Santa Claus

Chapter 19: New Year’s Eve

Chapter 20: New Year’s Day

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Chapter 1

"It’s the Holiday Season"

Wednesday, November 27, 1946

William Knight looked out of his office window high above the great metropolis of Chicago, Illinois and onto Michigan Avenue spread below him. It was a magnificent view from the sixth floor of this office building. The evening rush hour was just about to begin and already he could see more cars crowding onto the thoroughfare below him. Traffic was becoming congested down there on Michigan Avenue even as he continued to watch from above. Some city workers were finishing putting up some Christmas lights strung out across the traffic signals, which would be illuminated this Friday. Thanksgiving was coming late this year and there was one week less for the Christmas shopping than usual. Merchants who advertised on the radio station had been clamoring unhappily about this for the last month and many of them had started their special Christmas sales early.

The building, which housed his office, was a major radio station. High atop it a large antenna reached into the Chicago skies sending a strong radio transmission all over the Midwest. It was capable of reaching even the many states surrounding Illinois.

Are you ready? Will’s mother asked, standing in the doorway of the office they shared. She had her wool winter coat on. He grabbed his coat and hat and joined her, walking down the hallways of the radio station where they both worked. I am sorry to keep you so late tonight, honey, she was apologizing again. They did an early morning radio show together and were usually out of the building well before noon.

We are still well ahead of the rush, Will assured her as they stepped out onto Michigan Avenue. Do you want a cab?

Oh no; let’s walk, she replied with a smile. Betty Winslow was only 47 and a very handsome woman. She seemed to be in very good physical shape and hardly needed a cab. They liked to walk home when the weather was nice and today was such a day. Betty always looked so carefree as she strolled decisively down the sidewalk of Michigan Avenue with a confident swagger to her step even in her high heels.

William reflected that, while she was forty-seven years old, she looked only half that. To observe her, no stranger would think she had three grown sons who towered over her small form. Latched onto Will’s arm that way, she looked like a woman with a slightly younger man in her life and not his mother at all. Her dark hair was short and flipped out in the latest style of 1946, and under her warm coat she wore a fashionable wool suit. Betty was a brunette with a hint of auburn to her hair when the sunlight played right upon it. William suspected his mother’s hair was colored now, hiding any trace of gray, but he could not remember it ever looking any other way than it did now. Only the style of the cut had changed over the years. Betty’s makeup was also perfect, just like a movie star’s, though it was only her voice on the radio that was famous.

That voice was the odd part of Betty. If you just heard her voice you would imagine her to be a graying farm wife from rural Indiana. Nothing in her radio voice conveyed the sophisticated urban woman she really was. Only on the radio did she still sound a little like the rural Hoosier lady she had been in her youth.

We can look at the window displays as we go, Betty suggested, taking hold of his arm again as they moved west to find State Street. During the holiday season Will knew his mother loved to look at the Christmas lights and many scenes on display in the store windows. They had done this last year, the first Christmas season of peace after the Second World War. Will could sense that his mother was very happy now with the approach of the holiday season and all that it meant to her this special year.

Betty Winslow had three sons. William and Christopher were twins and had each just turned 30 this year. They were not identical and had never been able to do the switching places antics other twins were rumored to do. Then there was their younger brother Steve, 28, who did not look quite so very much like the twins and was certainly not as tall as his older brothers.

Now, for the first time since the war began, Betty was going to have her three boys all home together at Christmastime. This put her in a great holiday mood with less than a month to go.

Steve, the youngest, had married a British girl during the war and had not come home at all when the war ended. Betty had gone to see Steve and his wife last summer in England and she had persuaded them both to come see her in Chicago for a long visit this Christmas season. Will suspected his mother was paying for the steamship passage for the young couple, but said nothing about that. If she was happy to do it, he would be happy too.

His twin, Chris, was in an advanced aeronautical degree program at Ohio State University and newly married to an Ohio girl just this last summer. Chris and his bride had promised to be home for Christmas this year as they were spending Thanksgiving with the bride’s family in northern Ohio. Betty and William had met the bride last Christmas briefly when Chris brought her home to meet his mother and brother. They had seen her again at the June wedding in Ohio. Estelle Knight was otherwise a stranger to them. Clearly Betty hoped to know the young lady better by this holiday visit.

Hanging onto Will’s arm, Betty could maneuver him to the windows that she wanted to stop in front of and study. They had done this all week as they watched the magic unfold in the many stores along the State Street strip and the displays yet to be constructed in the many shop windows they passed.

I grew up in rural Indiana, dear, Betty reminded him. We had nothing like this, so Christmas always seems like such a magic time for me.

Do you believe in magic, mother? Will asked, letting her look at the window they were halted in front of.

Christmas magic, she replied with a smile and nodding her dark head at him. Yes, I do believe in Christmas magic.

To move her along, Will moved to the edge of the window and waited patiently for her. She finished looking and joined him. Now she had both hands in her pockets for warmth. There was a cold November wind off the lake today despite the sun being out-- typical of late fall in Chicago.

Hungry for turkey tomorrow? Betty asked as they continued their walk along State Street together.

How do you know it’s not ham? Will teased her. His own hands were in his pockets now, too.

Remember the fit Grandpa Debenham threw when Eloise did that once? Betty laughed at the recollection from many years ago. Will did and joined her in a smile. It was certain to be turkey tomorrow. Tradition was very strong with the families who had shared their Christmas holidays for so many years.

Since coming to Chicago from Denver during the Great Depression, Betty’s family had shared the holidays with special friends who had made the same journey at the same time: the Debenhams. The Depression had forced Frank Winslow, William’s stepfather, to go from Denver from Chicago to seek work. Then the rest of the family followed him east in due course by automobile. The Debenhams were making the same journey at the same time and they formed a little caravan to travel the uncertain road from Denver to Chicago. That added to the closeness between the Winslow-Knight Family and the Debenhams as they all settled in Chicago at the same time.

There was a regular rotation of holidays that had been tradition for nearly twenty years now among the families which had started back in Denver and continued to Chicago. For Thanksgiving, all the people would assemble at the home of Roy and Eloise Debenham. Roy and Eloise had two sons: Willie and Max who would both be there with their wives. Christmas dinner was the province of Grandfather John Debenham, an old Englishman who was looked after by his spinster daughter, Margaret, called Aunt Madge by everyone. Then, on New Year’s Day, the clans would assemble for dinner in Betty Winslow’s fashionable north side apartment. It had always been this way. Will understood that while he was away at the war the tradition had continued without him and his brothers. He was glad for his mother’s sake that she had such good friends to keep her company during the holidays when all three of her boys were gone from home.

Betty took his arm again as they crossed over some ice on the sidewalk. Will wondered about that. Betty usually held onto him only for direction and never for support. But before he could over think the gesture, Betty asked him a direct question.

Are you happy, Will? she asked him with motherly concern. His mother could read his moods and she certainly knew he was not very happy or even content with his life just now.

Not especially, Mom, Will replied honestly. He knew better than to lie to her.

Helping me with the radio show is not what you intended to do when the war ended, was it? she perceived at once.

Will let out a long sigh. He did not know how to answer her question so he hedged a bit. Well, to be truthful, I was not sure what to do, he said slowly. I know of nothing else in particular that I wanted to do. Helping you did not take me away from anything else I was planning at the time.

You wish you were still flying, don’t you? Betty asked, casting her eyes to the sky for a moment. Flying had always been important to all three of her boys. All of them were flyers. Will and Chris and flown for the American Army Air Corps, while little Steve had beaten them to war by enlisting in the Royal Canadian Air Force right out of college. He was now flying for a British airfreight service based in London. Chris was studying for an advanced aeronautical engineering degree in Ohio that would surely see him back up in the air again someday, probably making the next generation of aircraft for the United States military. Will was the only one of the three brothers grounded right now. He had not even been in an airplane for over a year.

My voice flies all over the airwaves, Will reminded her hopefully and with a loving smile. I remember how much it meant to me in the early years of the war when I could hear you and Pops on the station out of Chicago.

Will smiled at the recollection. Pops was his stepfather, Frank Winslow, who had died in 1945 at the ripe age of 74. The boys’ natural father had died in the First World War and none of them could remember him at all. Frank had married their mother in 1922 when she was 23 and he was 51. Pops had seemed very old to the boys then, but then, so did their mother. The boys never thought much about the vast age difference. They considered anyone out of school to be old in those days.

Frank had been the kindest of stepfathers and they had called him Pops as they got older. He had made their dreams of flying come true. Pops had friends in Denver that got them flying when they were small. Then, when the Depression made them move to Chicago, his radio show with Mom made enough money to send all three boys to the University of Illinois. Pops loved to spend his money on them. No real father could have loved them more. Will was sorry that Pops had not lived to see Will’s return from the war and for him to tell him how much he had loved him.

Oh dear, look who is coming our way, his mother changed topics on him, her voice dropping as she uttered the warning. He looked up and saw the subject of her dismay: Clara Adams, steaming at full throttle towards them. She had a hat on over her dark hair fixed in a tight bun. Her head was faced resolutely down against the wind and she was moving fast, even in her high heels. She was almost running to get to the radio station from her other job, several blocks away at a transcription studio affiliated with their station where she voiced characters in a popular national radio show. Mother and son moved apart and Clara Adams whisked right between them without even an acknowledgement, a pardon me, or even any kind of a holiday greeting.

The Wicked Witch of Michigan Avenue, Betty whispered to her son quietly as they watched her fly by them in haste.

How long have they called her that? Will wondered. When he had gotten to the radio station in late 1945, that was the name firmly attached to Clara Adams by her fellow workers. It seemed everyone at the station universally disliked her.

I am too old to call her that, Betty reproached herself. "You are the only person I know who does not have a Clara Story."

"What is a Clara Story?" Will asked.

At one time or another she has managed to offend nearly everyone at the radio station, Betty explained. "Sometime when you eat lunch in the building, ask anyone about Clara Adams and they will tell you their own, Clara Story. I am pretty certain they all have one."

You know I am not much interested in gossip, Will reminded her.

Well you are about the only person at the station who is not, Betty sniffed.

I have heard them speak disparagingly of her, Will struggled to remember. I remember Calvin saying a rattlesnake bit her once. After three long days of horrible pain, the snake died. Is that what you mean? A silly sort of exaggerated tale?

"No, there is more than folklore with a Clara Story," Betty explained.

When you went to England last summer Miss Adams worked out fine filling in for you, Will reminded her.

Clara had stepped in on the morning radio show to cover