Memories are the Best Gifts.

Thinking about what presents to give this holiday? Often the best are the memories that surround gift-giving.

Mom was suffering from a serious sinus infection; television was the last thing on her mind until her friend Geraldine Forrester bolted through the unlocked front door of our house and exclaimed, “Phyllis! Turn on the TV—the president’s been shot!”

Moments later, Mom watched in disbelief as CBS newscaster Walter Cronkite tearfully announced John F. Kennedy’s death in Dallas. It was November 22, 1963.

I was five and don't know if I actually remember that day. Based on Mom and Dad's stories, I picture us in our Fargo, North Dakota living room, watching one of the 3 ½ channels on our black and white Zenith. You see, back in those days, NBC, ABC, and CBS broadcasted from 6 a.m. to midnight and Prairie Public Television was on for just a few hours a day. A big, lovable plus was that my brother Danny’s future father-in-law, Marv Bossart, anchored the local WDAY nightly news.

Minus siblings Teddy and Danny who were in school, and Angie and Jon who were not yet born, the rest of us were inattentive to the terrible news, but we did notice that Mom was crying because she hardly ever teared up except in laughter when we had wet diaper fights.

Yeah, wet diaper fights.

In retelling the damp, snappy capers over the years, Mom claimed Dad merely watered down a clean diaper to chase us around, but I have a feeling not all Stoa kids played by the same non-golden rule.

Although Mom had her hands full nursing her sinuses, corralling kids, and emotionally processing the assassination of the 35th President of the United States, Dad also had his hands full because that was the same day that our 1954 Pontiac sedan died.

We would not get another car until March 7, 1964 on Larry’s fourth birthday. Mom and Dad told Larry that our shiny turquoise Dodge station wagon—with seat belts only for the front bench seat and a “dog seat” in the third row for three lucky kids—was his birthday gift.

The birthday sham caused many sibling fights over our preteen years. We tried to tell “Lar-Bear” that he couldn't own a car at the barely-beyond-diaper-stage age of four and that he had been duped by our parents. But Larry could not be convinced otherwise.

With no transportation that winter, each day Dad walked a snowy mile to and from Agassiz Junior High School where he taught math. And if they couldn’t wait until Saturday to borrow one of Grandpa and Grandma’s cars to drive to get groceries, Mom or Dad trudged a few blocks, pulling a wooden sled, to the Red Owl grocery store to get food for our family of eight.

Coincidently the next October near Monica's birthday, Mom won a brand new Red Radio Flyer wagon full of groceries from a Red Owl contest. And yup, she told Monica that the wagon was her birthday gift.

Like her big brother, Monica fell for the old birthday ruse, but she did not go to battle over her wheels. Was it because a blue Dodge station wagon was worth more than a Red Radio Flyer wagon on the open market? Or was it because at any time, we could snag a ride on a wagon, trike, tractor, or bike that next-door neighbor and friend Diane Stigen so generously shared? Your call.

A few weeks later, the first snow fell, and Mom and I discovered my toes had surpassed the soles of last year's winter boots. My black rubber and unlined boots had served our family well; they were hand me downs from Danny, and he had received them from Teddy.

Mom and I didn’t care that I tromped around in old boy boots, but she didn't like submitting to a Jack LaLane-worthy core workout every time she helped me yank the boots over my shiny, doctor-prescribed black leather shoes.

Picture: Me with my brothers Danny and Teddy in 1959. I wasn't lying about the hand me downs. Check out my boots. You can imagine I grew out of them by 1963.

After tussling with me through a particularly tough cold weather prep episode (think of 1983’s “A Christmas Story” where Randy looks like a tick about to pop), Mom decided it was time to buy me new boots as one of my early Christmas gifts. She planned that after dinner she and I would take a bus uptown to the big department store.

It was a very cold night. Although the Minnesota born and raised Charles Schulz wouldn’t debut his “Charlie Brown Christmas” until two Decembers later, his scene where Charlie and Linus walk on the crunchy snow on the beautiful, cloudless, deeply blue, starry night is exactly the type of night I remember. In lock-step like Charlie Brown and Linus, Mom and I walked out the front door and down the driveway, turned left at the sidewalk, marched to the corner and then West two blocks where we waited for a city bus to take us to J.C. Penney on Broadway.

I remember Penney's shoe department was toward the back of the store. There was a nice man with big polished shoes who showed us a selection of white and black boots. He measured my feet. My socks got wet as I stepped in cold water on the marble and wooden floors where snow had melted off my old boots.

I chose a pair of white rubber boots that zipped in front and had a gorgeous waft of short, fake fur across the top to keep out most snow that I would snag from running through all the snow banks that had not yet frozen to the point of becoming icy, impenetrable Fargo Mountains. My boot fur matched the white fur collar of my black wool coat. My outfit was jauntily topped of with a red woolen cap adorned with the latest in 1960s style plastic circles knitted into the cap.

After completing our holiday purchase, we crossed the street to wait for our return bus. In the breath-snatching cold, we watched cars drive slowly by to look at the Christmas scene in the Herbst department store window. It looked like the opening scenes from 1947’s “The Bishop’s Wife” and again, 1983’s “A Christmas Story.”

When we climbed aboard our bus, I was not able to take my gaze off my Christmas galoshes. Arriving home, we opened the door, and rode a rush of frozen vapors that rolled in across the front room rug. Connie, Larry, and Monica admired my new boots. Teddy and Danny were absent because Dad had tethered them and a living room lamp to the kitchen table so he could help them with their homework.

It was an unforgettable night out with Mom.

The End.

Well. Wait just a dang minute.

Gosh darn it.

As I think about it now…

I just got boots.

Larry got the car!