When I Discovered Bing Crosby…..by Carrie Ranworth

I was 3 and 1/3 years old in 1941.  THAT’s when I discovered Bing Crosby.  I know what you’re thinking…. who in the heck is Bing Crosby.  You are also wondering how anyone that age could have accomplished anything but toilet training.  Well, I did.  Let me tell you about it.

1941 was a wonderful year to be a kid like me.  Excitement abounded!  I lived in a small house on South Main Street on the edge of a little town called East Milford, population 3500 plus.  (And multiple dogs and cats running amok.)  The surroundings of the town were woods and country.  It was like paradise as a kid.  (I could have one foot in my back yard and one foot in the corner of my neighbor’s corn field. That’s where I kept a rock to hide my dimes in case I found any in the couch cushions.)  And by crackie (my grandma said that a lot), inside our house was just as fun, too.

We lived with my Grandma, my Mother and various Aunts. We had plenty of men in our family but World War 2 was raging in foreign parts of the world.   Our men had been called up to train in case our country got involved.  My Dad and Uncles were at various training centers. We only had one man in the neighborhood.  They said his flat feet kept him home.   It was postulated men were 4F if they had anything wrong with them, and that prevented them from the war.  I didn’t know what that meant, but I saw my neighbor’s feet and he only had 2 of them.

Let me describe our front room (living room.)  We had a davenport (couch) backed up directly to the window facing the street.  I could stand on the center cushion, rest my chin on the back of the davenport and view the whole world.  I viewed a lot of things, like my neighbor walking around 4F, my older sisters going off to school, the baker man coming in his vehicle filled with fresh rolls or maybe, the Fuller Brush man coming to show us his wares. I’ll tell you about him sometime.

 So anyway, we had a small table topped with a Westinghouse radio. Since the war was on, I watched the women of the house as they listened to the news, to see if worried looks appeared on their faces and they suddenly stopped doing what they were doing.  Then I knew to be scared. For instance, my Grandma would be at her singer treadle sewing machine (boy, she could make that thing go!) and she’d suddenly stop and look at the radio.   My Mom would be ironing.  (Yes, all clothing was ironed in those days.  The ironing board and iron held an important place in our lives in those days.  We even ironed our handkerchiefs. ( I suppose many of you may not know what those are…) My Aunts would be reading a romance magazine like “True Confessions.”  They were young and the young men were gone. They had to live vicariously.  Or something like that.  Anyway, they all stopped what they were doing and looked weird. 

 I learned the word “infamy” one of those weird times when the women stopped and looked weirdly at the radio.  I was told our country’s president was talking and he said that that day would live in “infamy (I guessed that meant we were finally in the war.)  Yep, we were in hot water from then on for a few years. It didn’t stop me from having fun though. 

Towards the end of that year, I was leaning against the davenport, standing up, and giving my chin a good rest, looking out on Main Street.  I saw the snow blanketing the lawns of our neighborhood in the late afternoon.  The sun made the trees glisten as icy snow clung to the branches.  Suddenly my ears perked up.  A voice was coming out of that ole’ Westinghouse radio singing a song I’d never heard in my short life.   This singing fellow was telling about a dream he had of a white Christmas. That fellow changed my life!

He sounded kind of  sad.  He sang about children listening for horses and sleigh bells coming.  And lots of snow. He sang about days being merry and bright.  By gummy (my Grandma also said that a lot,) that sounded nice.  We didn’t have horses nearby us, but our next-door neighbor had a herd of cows.  He led them past our house morning and night so they could eat grass over the hillside by the river. When we were out playing, we would have to dash for the front porch and hide behind the screen door so they wouldn’t stampede and get us killed!!  Scared a kid to death!!!

Well, anyway, that song about dreaming of a snowy, white Christmas was sung by a man called Bing Crosby.  Here it is, so many years later, and my ears still perk up when I hear Mr. Crosby sing that song. I can still feel the soft touch of the back of the davenport on my chin as I look out the window.  I can see a sleigh pulled by a big horse, slipping by, carrying laughing children and their parents. Bells are ringing and jingling.  Those days were merry and bright.

Those are bygone days.  It doesn’t snow as much as it used to.  But Bing still sings that song every Christmas season.  I’m glad I discovered him at such a young age.  When I hear that song, I can feel like a kid again, playing in the snow and waiting for Christmas Day.  Through the years, all my Christmas’s haven’t been white, but they’ve been very merry.  I hope yours have been, too. 

I wish that would be true for everyone.