Gift giver receives blessings unending

It was 1935. The Depression was still taking its toll. My father had been out of work for many, many months, only picking up odds and ends in jobs from time to time. Mother was holding us together financially by working as a chambermaid at the Newhouse Hotel.

Every morning after breakfast and after family prayer, my mother would leave for work, my sister and I for school and Father would take his prearranged route up one side of State Street, down the other side, up the east side of Main Street and down the west side. Many businessmen whom Daddy had come to know well were on the lookout for jobs he could fill.

On this morning, a few days before Christmas, it seemed to me he pleaded with his God in family prayer with added fervor. He asked him to please bless him this day that something would open up so he might provide a Christmas for his family.

Up and down State Street, up Main Street and the greeting was the same. Nothing! Discouraged, he stopped at Weidner's Shoe Repair Shop. This good man always had some hot Postum "on" for Daddy to help warm him up, as the weather was bitter. He also had a two-day job for my father which, of course, raised my father's spirits.

As they sipped their Postum together in the rear of the shop, Mr. Weidner handed Daddy a package. "A goose for your Christmas dinner," he said. "A lady who owed me some money for shoe repair brought it in this morning. I already have a turkey for our dinner so I thought, 'I will give this to Max.' "

Leaving Weidner's Shoe Repair, all the way down Main Street, he walked with a heart full of gratitude and thanksgiving. For the first time he could hear the sound of Christmas in the air and see the beauty of the Christmas season in the shop windows. He was going to take Elsa a goose she could prepare for their Christmas dinner. In his mind he made plans on how he would present this wonderful bird to her. In his mind he could see the expression on her face, and that warmed him, too.

To warm him further, he took his usual journey through the Broadway entrance of Auerbach's department store and out the State Street entrance, cutting off a half block from the cold. As he was making his way through the holiday crowd, he met a German woman from his hometown in Germany. She had recently been left a widow with two children to raise.

Father greeted her, saying "Fr�hliches Weinachten" (Merry Christmas), and the woman began to cry.

"It will not be a merry Christmas for us. I have only one loaf of bread in my house. That will be our Christmas dinner."