REMEMBRANCES OF CHRISTMAS PAST: Pat and Jim Eggert: “How did we end up here in this beautiful, peaceful part of the world?”
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FAMILY GET-AWAYS — The Eggert family of Colfax, Jim, Pat, and their children, Leslie and Anthony, generally spent Christmases in St. Louis or Sedona, Arizona. —photo submitted
Editor’s Note: Pat and Jim Eggert have lived just east of Colfax since 1971. Pat worked in public relations and journalism, retiring in 2006, and Jim taught economics at University of Wisconsin-Stout until he retired in 2001. When asked about being interviewed for a Remembrances of Christmas Past story, or possibly writing their own story, the Eggerts graciously agreed to write their own story.
By Pat Eggert
COLFAX — Our daughter, Leslie, was our family Christmas girl.
She started decorating the house as soon as she could and thought up new decorating schemes every year.
She has carried her practice to her home and four children in Baltimore.
There is an “Elf on the Shelf,” and there is a trip to a Christmas tree farm to get a tree — a real one, not the branch of a red pine that her father felt was a better choice since we could save a living tree and go into our woods and cut a branch.
(Do you know how hard it is to hang ornaments on a red pine branch — even a good sized one?)
Without her Christmas spirit, we have stopped putting up even a branch for a tree.
We do put up a silver foil tree after my grandson bought it for us at their school Christmas homemade shopping event three years ago.
Best tree we ever had.
St. Louis & Sedona
Actually, Christmas for our family was always a time to leave Colfax and travel to Pat’s relatives in St. Louis or Jim’s in Sedona, Arizona.
We flew when the kids were small enough to fly for free, and then we went to the Greyhound bus when Anthony was two and a half.
I still remember him crawling under the bus seats and stretching out on the floor to sleep.
I much preferred the train, even though the route took 24 to 30 hours after we picked it up in Galesburg, Illinois, so that we could stay on the same train until Flagstaff, Arizona.
We also drove sometimes, but that was always a bit scary, like the time we hit an ice storm in the Texas panhandle and were lucky to find a room in a crowded motel after two semis ahead of us went into spins on the icy road and wound up on opposite sides of the highway in the ditches.
I felt like I was watching a ballet of elephants. They seemed to be in slow motion and so graceful.
School
Several holidays we had to drive because we were going to spend the semester living in the little trailer in Jim’s parents’ backyard.
The kids got to attend school in Sedona, first and fifth for Leslie, and first, fifth and high school for Anthony.
That was a great experience for us all.
They got to know Grandma and Grandpa Eggert well, and they learned how to make new friends in a new school, with class sizes of 12 children.
We also did a lot of hiking in the desert and mountains around Sedona.
That may be where Anthony, at 6, learned how to drive his mother crazy by running up nearly vertical slopes on the hikes, or going right to the edge of cliffs.
But, all things considered, we always looked forward to Christmas adventures with Grandparents in St. Louis or Sedona.
Winter
Having those few weeks in a warmer climate always made the winter so much more bearable.
When we drove back from the airport parking lot in January — after having defrosted our doors and got a jump for our battery — driving through the road cut into Colfax made us comment to each other, “How did we wind up here in this beautiful, peaceful part of the world?”
We are in Colfax looking for your house.