Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The US Supreme Court is on the ballot in november.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

The problem people have with Biden’s age is the color of the VPs skin.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Ah, the different things are different argument.

Books are my comfort food!

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

I really should read my own blog.

Chutkan laughs. Lauro sits back down.

The choice is between normal and crazy.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about it’s history.”

You are here: Home / Photo Blogging / On The Road / On The Road – Paul in Jacksonville – Christmas Past

On The Road – Paul in Jacksonville – Christmas Past

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On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.

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Paul in Jacksonville

Here are a few from the past, some of which I know the year, some of which I don’t.

On The Road - Paul in Jacksonville - Christmas Past 7

Christmas 1955. I was 23 months old. My due date was December 25; I emerged on January 7. My brother was born on December 21, and my sister was born on December 23. My mother’s birthday was March 17. Doing the math made me wonder if my dad got lucky once a year?

On The Road - Paul in Jacksonville - Christmas Past 6

Tinsel seems to be the common thread we all share. My parents would pin the Christmas cards we received to the tree.

On The Road - Paul in Jacksonville - Christmas Past 5

I was probably too young to fully appreciate this all metal fire truck. They don’t make toys today like they used to, do they?

On The Road - Paul in Jacksonville - Christmas Past 3

Cannot figure out the year. Here we are, in front of our respective best gifts of the year. My youngest sister with her guitar, me and my stereo, my brother with his saxophone, and my December 23 sister with her sewing machine.

On The Road - Paul in Jacksonville - Christmas Past 4

A few years later, my youngest sister with a bicycle, and me with a (in retrospect) stupid hat.

On The Road - Paul in Jacksonville - Christmas Past 2

I thought a dress shirt would be a great gift for my dad. Turned out it was not so great. He worked a union job in a machine shop his entire life, so he had little chance to wear this type of shirt.

On The Road - Paul in Jacksonville - Christmas Past 1

Under the “all holidays matter” proviso, I declare a birthday to be a holiday. Here I am with my niece Kelsea, sharing a birthday cake. Sadly, in 2006, Kelsea died at the age of 16 from a drug overdose.

On The Road - Paul in Jacksonville - Christmas Past

Unknown date and not a holiday. Here’s a selfie from before they had a name. Happy Holiday wishes to jackals everywhere from Jacksonville, Florida, USA.

Reader Interactions

27Comments

  1. 1.

    mrmoshpotato

    Love the pictures-from-childhood posts.

    That last one definitely isn’t recent judging from the quality and corded phone 😱!

  2. 2.

    sab

    With all that tinsel on trees, it is amazing that so many cats and toddlers survived Christmas in the 1950-1980 period. Also too, early tinsel was lead, not cellophane.

  3. 3.

    eclare

    I think the men’s dress shirt was a pretty common gift back then.  I know my dad got one every year, and looking back he probably would have preferred a bottle of Jack.

    I am sorry about your niece.

  5. 5.

    sab

    My tinsel comment was kind of whining. I was a toddler then and I loved everything about Christmas. Especially the tinsel

  6. 6.

    sab

    @eclare: My dad was a grinch and hated Christmas. We gave him the same ptesent for twenty years ( it was a shirt)  and he never opened it, so we gave it to him the next year, for twenty five years.

  8. 8.

    sab

    My stepdaughter was  going to do Christmas. Yay, I don’t have to. Then she realized it was above her pay grade. Back in my lap.

    I was very very angry. Snippy all week with my spouse. I did Turkey day. Our kids aren’t kids. They are in their forties. They can’t host a holiday!!

    I have been nasty all week with the kids. They are his not mine.

    Then one of them says they will host but we will bring the food. Fine with me. Baby steps for forty year olds

    What is wrong with these people? They have parents but they are not kids. Borderline middle age and still acting like toddlers.

  9. 9.

    mrmoshpotato

    @sab:

    Then one of them says they will host but we will bring the food. Fine with me. Baby steps for forty year olds. 

    You bring the booze – for yourself. :)

  10. 10.

    MagdaInBlack

    @sab: Oh i so love the passing of the holiday gatherings on to the next generation…..not. With my in-laws it was the opposite. My MIL was no way going to ever give over control of that gathering to anyone, not even her adult children.  Ok, fine, you wanna do all the work, go for it.

    People are goofy

    Eta: you could do your own gathering but you by god better be there at her house the day she told you or else.

  12. 12.

    raven

    @MagdaInBlack: Did you see all the Christmas insanity in “Bear”? Jamie Lee Curtis was off the hook as the mom

     

    Rarely has there been a Christmas Eve dinner as epically fucked as the meal depicted in “Fishes,” the guest-star-laden sixth episode in Season 2 of FX series The Bear. Set five years before the show’s main narrative, the 66-minute flashback is a non-stop dread ride — a gruesome autopsy of a clan bound by genetics, mental illness, substance abuse, and intergenerational trauma.

  14. 14.

    Paul in Jacksonville

    @raven: I was raised in Chicago. I spent a week at a music camp in Champaign, and the t-shirt was a memoir of that experience.

  18. 18.

    NotMax

    [cue spooky music]

    Looks suspiciously like the same yellow record on the turntable as appeared in another jackal’s photos earlier.
    :)

  20. 20.

    MagdaInBlack

    @NotMax: That stereo looks very similar to the one I had. I think the color is the turntable.

    Else we have a time traveling yellow record 🙂

  21. 21.

    WaterGirl

    Ha!  Because of our birthdays, my sisters and I used to joke that my parents had sex twice a year – on New Years and on their anniversary.

  23. 23.

    Albatrossity

    Ooooh, more tinsel!

    For some reason, our cats never bothered the tinsel or the tree. No lead poisoning in our house! But this, from Wikipedia, is interesting. No evidence for hazard, so no ban on the stuff, just a request for voluntary cooperation from manufacturers and importers…

    Lead foil was a popular material for tinsel manufacture for several decades of the 20th century. Unlike silver, lead tinsel did not tarnish, so it retained its shine. However, use of lead tinsel was phased out after the 1960s due to concern that it exposed children to a risk of lead poisoning.[8] In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) concluded in August 1971 that lead tinsel caused an unnecessary risk to children, and convinced manufacturers and importers to voluntarily stop producing or importing lead tinsel after January 1, 1972. The FDA did not actually ban the product because the agency did not have the evidence needed to declare lead tinsel a “health hazard.”[9]

    And the caption for the first photo made me chuckle. A back calculation leads to the conclusion that I was conceived on or about my dad’s birthday…

  27. 27.

    Paul I Jacksonville

    @WaterGirl: when I was visiting my mom for her memorial for my dad, I told that story to the 75 or so people who attended. She did not deny my theory.

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