h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

As US-type persons, Elektra and I have only a dim understanding of the term 'Boxing Day'. I looked it up, and the observance seems to be rooted in feudalism and the distribution of leftovers. Nice idea. Elektra said, 'Oh, that's why businesses give gift baskets, and we give things to the postal lady.' Cool.

Then we got confused about why people on h2g2 said today wasn't really Boxing Day. I looked that up. It makes sense: The retailers need to unload all that surplus merchandise, so if it's a weekend, you have a couple of extra holidays. Also cool.

That would be a good thing hereabouts. We woke up to a world covered in snow today. North Carolinians don't do well in snow. We'll be sitting at home, watching it out the window. I'm sure some brave souls with four-wheel drive will be out at the Superbullseye looking for bargains. I'll stay home with my leftover turkey and Netflix. So far, we've seen 'The Colour of Magic' and 'Hogfather'. I'm sure I'll find something else to entertain with. We can sing carols, too - I'll warm up the keyboard.

The snow made me nostalgic, though. Elektra and I both grew up in Pennsylvania, where there's lots of snow. (We don't miss it.)

At Christmas time, my mom had her own version of Boxing Day-type activities. For weeks, she would make candies - she was a handy candymaker. She was also frugal: she saved every candy box she received. Come holiday time, she lined these boxes with tinfoil and filled them with an attractive assortment of candies: divinity, fudge, little Christmas wreaths made of corn flakes in syrup, dyed green, with red-hots for berries, etc. Then she covered the lids in Christmas paper, tied the boxes with bows - she did this like a professional - and added a card.

The postman got a surprise when he opened the mailbox. The newspaper boy was probably just a bit disappointed that it wasn't a fiver. The people at the cleaner's were bowled over, frankly. It was...unusual.

Then my mom would figure out what we should give my piano teacher. One year, it was a perspex bud vase shaped like a treble clef. Sounds tacky, but Miss Lundgren loved it.

Miss Lundgren was my window into the past. A well-organised, superintelligent visitor from the 19th Century, she not only taught me how to pronounce the word 'schön', and how to finger Bach and put the body-German on Schumann, but she told me stories of the past. Miss Lundgren's past was full of wonders: New York City as it was, growing up in an Irish neighbourhood where her friend David, the bookish Jewish kid, was nicknamed 'Murph' by the others, so he wouldn't feel left out. Where a popular song was 'Where do you work-a, John? On the Delaware Lackawann'. What do you do-a, John? I poosh, I poosh, I poosh...'

She taught me how the lace-curtain Irish kids played 'Paddy Fell Over the Dump. First, you all gather in the Parlour. (We didn't have a Parlour, we had a living room. I was jealous.) One child, probably the biggest, gets up and announces that he/she, probably she, is the great pianist So-and-So. With much bowing and fantastical gestures, the performer announces the song she will play. Then comes the careful placement of the piano bench, the tossing of imaginary tails from the evening coat, the cracking of knuckles, etc...

Then, with more flourishes, the performer plays, grandly, seven notes...the song known as 'Paddy Fell Over the Dump'. Much laughter and applause. Great kid's game, huh?

From then on, if something was a big fuss about nothing, I called it 'Paddy Fell Over the Dump'.

Miss Lundgren loved hot tea. I grew up drinking tea, every day - but it was iced tea. We didn't even know how to make hot tea. I was introduced to it one snowy day, which is why I was telling Elektra about it now, while we sat looking out the window at the white stuff lying on all the branches. I had to walk about half a mile to my teacher's house after school, and Miss Lundgren announced that I looked frozen and, while I got out of my coat and boots, she'd make us some tea.

The tea was a revelation - piping hot, favourful, even though it was just some orange pekoe from the grocery, as my teacher lived on a shoestring all her life. With it, she served saltines. 'But you have to butter them, honey dear,' she said.

I had no idea how to eat a 19th-Century buttered cracker, so this daughter of Sweden taught me. 'You butter the edges, then hold the cracker in the center between two fingers,' she explained. 'It's genteel.'

We were both pleased with the result. When I got home, I had a tale to tell about this passing on of ancient knowledge. My mom, whose best friends were always elderly ladies, was impressed.

So, this particular Christmas, my mother found a tea sampler - a little shelf with eight miniature tea boxes with different flavours of tea in them. When we - my mom, my sisters, and I - took the box to Miss Lundgren, she was overjoyed. This lady was always overjoyed. She knew how to express joy in a way that I have never known in another human being. To give her pleasure was to receive it back tenfold. (We took her to hear the Pittsburgh Symphony once. When they performed Beethoven's Fifth, she cried silent tears.)

Delight beamed from Miss Lundgren's round face, and her mild blue eyes sparkled through the bottle-thick glasses.

'We must try them.'

So each of us tried a cup of tea - as far as I know, my mother's first cup of 'hot tea', though I was a pro by now. And crackers. And conversation. A pleasure shared. And joy.

Miss Lundgren's gone to the galaxy now. So is my mother. But that little gift, which cost a couple of dollars and an hour of time, is still giving.

It gave me a moment of pure pleasure to share with Elektra. I hope it gives you something, too.

Happy Boxing Day, whenever you celebrate it.

Oh, Dmitri, what a delightful tale! Your Miss Lundgren sounds like a real treasure. I love the way you recall your memories, you make them so vivid I found myself smiling all the way through your story.

I look forward to reading more throughout the coming New Year


lil xx

Thanks, lil. A happy season to you.

You paint a vivid picture when you write about the things you love. Thank you for posting this little gem.

Everybody should have a Miss Lundgren.

Dmitri - that story was a real treat! Thank you so much for writing it.

Twas Boxing Day here, or whatever the official version of the second day of Christmas, this year, is. We celebrate them all, all the way to Twelfth night - which is my favourite Christmas night of all.

nah! Christmas and boxing day - piffle!

having friends HERE and "talking" with them, makes it Christmas EVERY DAY


you can't buy THAT!!!!!!!!!!

What a lovely story. Thank you for sharing it with us.

No snow here this year. No sunshine, either. Christmas was gray and drizzly outside but warm and bright inside.

to the lucky person with no snow. The eastern US is under a white blanket today.

I've been seeing pictures of all the white stuff back East and am glad not to have any of it.

Lovely story. Thanks for sharing.

Great story Dmitri! Sorry to hear you don't like snow. Over here I've never seen snow in my life! The closest was after some serious hail storms when the ground was white everywhere from the hailstones lying several inches thick. I think snow is probably a bit nicer than that. Even so it was a novel enough experience to go out and trudge about amidst the hailstones, or to scoop them up in huge frozen-together pieces. Or even finding a nice stone bigger than a chicken's egg. I once kept huge hailstones in the refrigerator for a while as a 'mememento'.

Over here of course it is now high summer. We had a marvelous cloudburst on Christmas Day, giving us 3 inches (75 mm) of rain. We got a slight bit of hail a while before that, and a very brief shower yesterday.

I never heard of that way of buttering and eating a cracker before!

Great story about the Jewish kid called Murph. Did you know we have Irish Afrikaners too? The van der Murphys... No seriously there are some who immigrated over here, and many of them rather integrated with the Afrikaans community than with the English.

Oh ... and sorry for not having wished a merry Christmas and a happy Boxing day. But I do hope you had! I wasn't here ... no net access for 2 weeks. Anyways in South Africa, apparently we call Boxing Day the 'Day of Goodwill'. I never heard of that before, I just read it on wikipedia. Anyways and a happy New Year now! To you, to Elektra, to everyone else reading here also!

I lived in Southern California for a year as a child, and it never snows there, either. So when it hailed one day, the teacher sent us out to play in the hail! I didn't think it was a good idea, but what did I know, I was only seven... Though she did call us back in when someone got hit in the head.

I'm not supposed to laugh at the hailstone story, am I?

Dmitri, Miss Lundgren reminded me of someone who takes (and gives) the same amount of pleasure from everything. A real decent old lady in the family who can't understand why everyone loves her so much!

Wow. Great stories, there. Y'all are off to a great start in 2011, you h2g2 storytellers.

You're right, KB - people like that never know how much pleasure they give. Once, when I was passing through Pittsburgh, I called my teacher on the phone (this was in the Dark Ages, when we had no cell phones and 'long-distance' cost the earth.) I got around to telling her shyly how much our friendship had meant to me growing up. She seemed surprised, bless her.

'Go out and play in the hail.' Some people should be put away. That's amazing, even for the West Coast...

We had a small hailstorm in western North Carolina once. Nothing like yours, Willem - I'd want to keep those in the freezer, too. Most people in that area have no garage. So the next day, we all had to go to the insurance office. The poor man was very busy, taking pictures of our cars and writing us checks for repairs to the roofs, which had hundreds of tiny dents in them.

I remember a weird summer hailstorm in Athens. Came out of nowhere. There's something awesome about it. We sat on the balcony, under the eaves, and looked.

Now snow, Willem, is pretty. But it's dangerous and makes a lot of work. We get jaded and grumpy, shame on us, I guess.

A great New Year's Day memory: It was 1975. 1st January. I woke up from my nap on the bus (the whole German + Foreigners tour group had been celebrating Sylvester in Munich the night before, and since it was run by Germans, had to get up at five, anyway), looked out the window.

The sun was rising over the Alps. I was in awe. I was also in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

We got out. Tons of fresh powder snow. Half a dozen Filipinos and Malaysians went beserk - very short students discovering what it was like to disappear into a snowdrift.

They made snowballs. They decided this was too slow. They threw armfuls of snow at each other.

Locals passed by, shaking their heads. It was like watching kittens experiencing their first snowfall.

Now *that's* appreciating nature.

Lovely story Dmitri, you conjure up such lovely cosy pictures.

It is damp dull and cold here and though the snow can be a pain I do miss its blanket of silence and brightness, and the camaraderie it seems to engender among most folk. It is best viewed as you are doing, from the window, by a cosy fire when you have no need to go out.

it soon gets spoilt by feet and wheels but before that it is a little bit of heaven.

So sorry you have not experienced it Willem, it is a treat. I remember a relative coming up to visit from Cornwall, having never seen down there, and it snowed on Christmas Eve - and the shining eyes of the newcomers to snow was something I have never forgotten.

Websailor

Hail is unwelcome in my region not just for the inital damage it causes. It seems to accompany tornados. We have far too many of those. I don't worry that much about the general warnings until it starts to hail. Then I definitely head for cover.

We have snow for Christmas quite often. It does make everything magical, especially for children.

We lived in San Antonio for many years in the 80s and 90s. I've forgotten which year it was, but we had one of those freak, hundred year snowstorms. Over a foot, which is normal for where I was raised but very rare in San Antonio. The kids who lived next door to us had never seen snow beyond a few flurries. They thought they'd died and gone to heaven. I had to show them how to make snow angels and did a quick snowman class for them. Then we made snow ice cream. That was the good part of the snow. The bad part was that everyone in the neighborhood was in a state of panic and absolutely terrified to get out and drive in it. The Interstates were closed because the exits were so full of drifts. So F, bless him, New England native that he was, became the neighborhood errand runner and delivery man. And we were the only ones for blocks around with a snow shovel! It was passed from house to house.

I know that one, Hypatia. Around here, it snowed one year, and everybody but me was out removing snow from their cars with their *hands*. (I had a snow brush in the car, of course.)

My dad had a funny snow cream story - it seems that when he was a small child - about 1930 - he made some snow cream. But it was too cold, so he put it in his grandmother's cast-iron wood stove to warm it up.

Apparently, he scorched her best pan...

Over here tornadoes are very rare, Hypatia. We do get them from time to time ... especially in the Free State, but that is far from where I live. And when one happens, it's big news. I remember once having a dream about a terrible storm and the next day reading in the newspaper about a devastating tornado.

I've studied German for a while at the University of Limpopo, and we had a system of exchanging students, each year some students coming here from Germany, and a few of our students going to Germany. It was always a big treat for our students to see snow there for the first time.

Here's a picture of my father during a rare snow in the Johannesburg region. That was a few years before I was born:

http://family.webshots.com/photo/2131471350103203115hUBKtC

That was only a few inches ... hardly enough for a snowball let alone a snowman!

Dmitri, I actually don't like ice cream because it's so cold. I often have it in a bowl and let it melt first, and then sort of drink it. What I am very disappointed by is how much ice cream these days has very little 'substance' ... when molten it hardly amounts to anything.