Tradiciones: Navidad
“Puck, you can’t run here. Slow down, bud.”
Puck’s Chucks stopped tearing up the cement for a few seconds.
“You can’t blame him now,” said an older African-American man walking by with a big grin. “He’s got brand new legs!”
Soulard: the morning before Christmas Eve.
Spices, meats, eggs, cheese, mountains of shiny bright fruits, Christmas candies, nuts, and vegetables sometimes too big to be true.
Dad had bussed us down, including Grandma and two of Linnea-Irish’s friends. Unfortunately Joe was a few hours removed from the stomach flu, so he and Jaya stayed home.
Purchases were made in the four branches or “tubes” as Puck called them of the market. While Mom stopped for coffee and salami at the spice shop, Grandma took Puck to get pretzel sticks. Francis bought himself a “Big Daddy” – triple stack of Oreos, chocolate, and peanut butter at the flower shop. Linnea hunted up pineapples and pomegranates, and a little ring with the Lord’s Prayer written on it in Spanish. And Carrie-Bri found a catnip fish for Tootsie, homegrown catnip.
We left before 9:45. Next business: lunch.
As we waited at a stoplight, Puck asked about the man holding a sign in the intersection, smoking a cigarette.
“Why is he standing there?”
“He might be homeless and need food or money,” El Oso began to explain.
“Then how come he has enough money for a cigar?!”
Crown Candy: super-fast service heralding The Big Cheese, BLTs popping with bacon, Ruebens, vanilla malts. The usual.
Candy case on the way out, including my palm-sized peanut butter cup. Yum-yum.
On the way out to drop Grandma off in Florissant, Linnea and her friends argued about Catholicism in the back seat. Surprisingly, Francis did not feel the need to take a nap.
In a lazier afternoon, after Puck watched Carrie make a lard-based birdseed wreath for the feathery creatures outdoors, he and El Oso took a trip to the woods across the highway to explore and hunt up treasure. They returned with armfuls of geodes to crack later.
The evening wrapped up with some of the old Kitts-Carrie-Eve Christmas plays from back in the day. The next generation now gets to view.