Ned Luce

You have stories like these, you know, the Best Christmases. 

When I was a kid in Hudson, Ohio, our family had a couple of acres which included enough land for a small pasture. My folks bought a gnarly Welsh pony for my brother, sister and me to ride, feed, and clean up after. 

In retrospect it was probably a strategy to generate responsible behavior from us kids, or at least my younger brother. 

After a few years my adolescent growth presented challenges for both “Prince” the pony and me. Consequently, I took $40 from my paper route savings, borrowed $60 from my folks and bought a scrawny quarter horse for $100 from a man carving a stick whilst selling the horse. I have subsequently learned that one should not buy horses from someone carving a stick. 

“Katy” the horse came to me without a saddle so I borrowed an old army saddle from a local farmer for whom I had worked. The structure of an army saddle is not designed to enhance male reproductive capability, especially for a young guy going through puberty. No matter, I “soldiered” on for several months. 

Christmas morning my family was exchanging gifts, mostly the requisite socks and underwear with a couple of unexpected items like a shirt. 

Soon I started to feel as if I was paying the price for being the oldest child because my modest stash of gifts did not meet minimum standards. After all the gifts were exchanged my father encouraged me to go into a side room and pull the large unwrapped box out of the closet. Yep, you knew it, the box contained a nice used western saddle for “Katy” and me. It was a great day the day after Christmas when I returned the army saddle and riding “Katy” became far more comfortable. 

Thirty years later BJ and I were living in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, close enough to the ski areas in Summit County, Colorado for a one-day drive as we braved the snowy/icy challenges of I-70 in western Kansas and eastern Colorado. As a result, when our children were young we did enjoy skiing on Christmas day for several years. 

Somewhat unexpectedly the number of folks actually skiing on Christmas day was fewer than you might anticipate. I suppose they might be sleeping in after some eggnog-infused revelry from the night before or they were opening their presents. 

In any case, we had explained to our kids that the trip to the mountains was their Christmas present so they might as well get up and head for the “steep and the deep.”

The scene at the ski mountain whether it was Keystone, Copper, or Breckenridge, (the former home of my local friend Bob Hobart), was very festive. Christmas hats were de rigueur for all. The lift operators and the ski patrollers seemed to be dressed universally as elves and the slopes were full of folks in Santa Claus costumes. 

BJ and I agree that skiing with our children in that environment on Christmas was magical.

Unfortunately, after several years of those trips the kids’ skills morphed into them being able to enjoy the trees and moguls more than BJ and I did so our skiing became more focused on just BJ and me. Nonetheless, those trips provided some of my best Christmas presents. 

There have been many Christmas days in my life. The experiences I described above provided lifelong, unassailable lessons for me. The work I did for the farmer confirmed the adage from Will Rogers, “Always drink upstream from the herd.” On the ski hills I learned what we all should know, never eat yellow snow. 

Love a curmudgeon and have a Merry Christmas!

(Ned Luce is a retired IBM executive and Port Ludlow resident; his fondest holiday memory harkens back to that Christmas when an old geezer yelled at him from his window to go buy that prize turkey hanging in the Poulterer’s window, with a shilling for his help. Email Ned at ned@ptleader.com.)