Holiday Travel

Did you travel anywhere for Christmas? How did you travel and who traveled with you? Do you remember any special trips?

Growing up, I rarely had to travel anywhere. I was much younger than my brothers so they were the ones who got to travel to come home to my parents' house. I really don't remember travelling anywhere for Christmas. I have a vague recollection of going to my brother Jim's house one year because I seem to remember eating the Virginia ham that he always had and putting together some of his kid's toys. However, it was like most other Christmases.

Of course, I've travelled most of my adult life to my parents' house for Christmas. There was one memorable trip. I was living in Cincinnati, and I didn't get off until around noon on Christmas eve. I always took a half-day on Christmas eve though so that I didn't have to travel late into the night. On that particular December 23, I was closely monitoring the holiday weather as I worked. When I got home that evening and saw where the storm was and where it was headed, I saw that if I waited until morning that I was not going to make it home for Christmas. I packed my bags and Brumley's things, took a quick nap, loaded the car, and left at 7 p.m. Eastern and drove overnight to Mississippi. It snowed on me the last hour and a half of my drive. Shortly after I got to Mom's the power went out there. As I watched the news the next morning, I noticed that there was severe icing and interstates closed along the route that I had driven the night before so I knew I'd made the right decision to get out of town while I could even if I did run short on sleep. There were still bad power outages all over north Mississippi that next morning, and we thought one of my brothers was going to have to bring some of the stuff from his freezer down to Mom's so it wouldn't spoil. I think his power came on before it got too critical, but it was out for a long time by usual standards. I always think of that as the Christmas I almost didn't make it home for Christmas. Yes, we did have a White Christmas that year--something very unusual for Mississippians.