Oh, stop it...not talkin' about that kind of beefstick!
Anyway, most families that celebrate Christmas have a holiday tradition or two that they carry out every year during the holiday season. I have one, too, and it involves a Pepperidge Farms Beefstick. It goes like this.......
Waaaaay back in 1979 when I was naught but a 22 year old sergeant serving in the United States Air Force, Christmas of that year found me at Kunsan Air Base in the Republic of South Korea. I had been married about 18 months, just had a newborn son born to me the month previous, and had never been away on a remote tour before. (A remote tour, for those civilians among us, is when you go overseas for a year and can't take your family with you.) So needless to say, Christmas was going to be a challenge for me.
That's when my father and mother , bless their hearts, came up with a novel idea.
One of the things you missed the most in Korea at that time was good old American food. See, back then there were no McDonald's incountry or any other kind of American food place, and the only American food you could get was at the big commissary - in Osan, 200 miles north. At my base we were limited to what we could get at the Base Exchange, which wasn't much. And the mail service was slow at best, so any food you sent over to Korea had to be non-perishable.
So my parents came up with the idea of sending me a Pepperidge Farms Beefstick. All two feet of it! To say it was popular in the barracks would be a huge understatement! We had a hell of a party around just the beefstick! I loved it because I love beefsticks, and it was a taste of home in a land very far away. It also meant something to me because my parents had sent it to me. That alone made it special.
So the next Christmas when I was at home, they sent me and my family another one. And the tradition was born...every year since then, I've gotten a beefstick for Christmas from my parents. And that includes the Christmas I spent in Taegu Air Base, Korea in 1989 and the Christmas I spent in Saudi Arabia during Operation DESERT SHIELD. On both occasions - especially in Saudi Arabia - the beefstick was really popular with my coworkers, and I literally had to keep it under lock and key when I was in the Gulf!
My son joined the Air Force the same year I retired, and when he went away for his first holiday I fully intended on sending him a beefstick to keep the tradition alive...and then I thought, 'Nope, better let my parents do it.' After all, THEY are the ones who started the tradition, so by all rights it should be them who continue it. So every year for the ten years my son has been in the service he's gotten a beefstick for the holidays from my parents - and that includes Christmas 2003 when he was in Iraq, and again this year in the same place.
So the tradition will continue, at least for as long as I'm around. I'll pick it up when it's my time - which I hope will be a LONG time from now - and if my son has children and one of them is a boy who joins the service, I suspect the tradition will continue.
And that's just fine with me.
IHC
6 comments:
That's awesome. It's the kind of tradition that doesn't take much sacrifice, but means the world to know that you're in their hearts and in their thoughts, and that your service means something to someone.
Man, you got that right...the lonesomest feeling in the whole world is to be overseas in a foreign land, especially if it's a Muslim country, away from your family at Christmas. Something that small can - and does - make such a huge difference!
Thanks for the comment! IHC
Hey bro, how is Sparky over there? We'll be thinking of him and praying for him and his troops. I gotta tell ya, those Christmas care packages were real nice when we were deployed...I used to love the homemade cookie crumbs!!! Well, I know YOU understand that reference, civilians may not understand...LOL!!!
Hey, my brutha! Sparky is fine, spoke with him just last week. He thought he would be coming home last month but that didn't happen. Looks like February or March right now. Sucks, but he's hanging in there!
LOL...glad you clarified to start with. My uncle was in Iraq (or as I like to call it, the world's largest litterbox) last year, so M&M's were his taste of home...to this day, he's still hooked on them, I guess because they remind him of how wonderful it is to have family looking out for you.
Well put, LMS, that part about being reminded of family looking out for you. So true...
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