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Sunday, December 8, 2024

The "A Very Unusual Merry Christmas Story" To You And Your Family From The Woods' Household" Stry

It was an ordinary day.  Reading a story in my Sunday News that was in the "I Know A Story" column.  Stories must be true and written by the author and must be told in 600 words or less.  Today's story was written by a fellow named Arnold Krakow who happened to be the same age as I am and shared some of the same things that I did when I was a young boy living near the train station in Lancaster, PA.  Story began with ....... In 1955, I was an 11-year-old boy, one of four children living with my family in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.  My parents struggled to support us.  They kept track of every dime.  A week or so before Christmas, my sister, who was 8, and I decided to go window-shopping at a neighborhood mom-and-pop consignment store on Eighth Avenue.  I was in front of a bus stop.  We wanted to buy something for our mother, but we didn't have any money and weren't sure how to earn some.  We looked in the window and saw a beautiful serving platter - well, it was beautiful to us - made of tin or some other cheap material.  The price was 50 cents. We talked about how we wished we had the money to buy it.  As we started to walk away, we saw two quarters land on the ground nearby.  Amazed, we picked them up.  We realized that a man we had seen standing at the bus stop must have dropped the quarters there for us.  We brought them over to him.  "They aren't mine," he said with a smile.  "They aren't ours, either," we said.  Moments later, the bus came and he left us there with the two quarters.  So we took both quarters into the store and bought the platter.  We "gift wrapped"it in a brown bag on Christmas Eve.  On Christmas morning our mom opened the "gift" and with tears in her eyes - as well as in ours - we hugged and kissed each other.  We were happy and so blessed.  Merry Christmas, to everyone!  The author of the story lives in Manheim Township where my wife and I had lived most of our married lifetime until we moved to Woodcrest Villas a little over three years ago.  The title of the "I Know A Story" story from the newspaper today was "It was a 50-cent holiday miracle on Eighth Avenue."  The picture that was attached to the story showed a pie on a pie plate that was decorated with a Santa.  I loved the story and thought you too might enjoy it this time of year.  My only comment I might have about the story today was that the picture showed Santa sitting in the flower pot, but the flower pot seems to be sitting sideways with the flowers running from side to side.  Not that it matters....but it just seemed rather unusual to have Santa in the center of a pie plate sitting sideways on the flower pot.  Oh, well.....It's Christmas......so does it really matter anyway?  Merry Christmas to all of you reading this story and I hope you also have a Happy New Year.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy. 

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