When I was growing up in the late 70s and early 80s, there was no "Black Friday" as we know it today. What my family did was, since my aunt worked in a bank and had Veteran's Day off, that was the beginning of our shopping season.
When I was five or six, I asked for money to buy Christmas gifts for everyone. My mother gave me $20 (probably about $50 today). Even so, that doesn't go far when you are buying for 10 people. The mall that year had artists in the middle kiosks, and there was a man who crafted things from seashells. They were priced right and I bought several for people on my list. I asked my mom to buy me a small amount of pipe tobacco for my uncle, and the hardest person to buy for was Papaw. So I left his gift for last, and in so doing, I had under $1 to spend. I found the best gift ever for him at the grocery store -- he drank coffee all day, and I can remember his dress shoes clipping from the table to the coffee pot for refils, so in my six year old mind, the perfect gift was a trial sized container of Taster's Choice coffee for 29 cents. The great thing is, that gift went down in legend, and when I was a senior in high school, I gave him a larger container of coffee and said that was the rest of his gift from when I was 6. Everyone had a great laugh about that.
Another year, I was still very little, probably still in Kindergarten, and my mother had always warned me about germs, not to use combs that belonged to other kids at school, and was a bit overprotective about my health. She had somehow burnt her hand badly on the toaster. I remember I was terrified of her hand, not understanding how germs and contagion worked. After going to the mall and Hills, my aunt, cousin and I stopped for dinner at Long John Silver's. I always ordered the Billy Boneless chicken meal for kids. There wasn't a toy with it, but there was a treasure chest where they would give you a coin, and you would get a bubblegum machine type prize from the chest. I remember Mom touching one of my hush puppies. I was terrified I would catch her burn (it looked terrible.). I don't remember how I reacted except I didn't want to eat the hush puppy thinking it would turn my skin looking like hers. I do remember that she told me how bratty I acted and how embarrassing it was, and I got spanked when we got home. I remember thinking how it was unfair but worth it so that I wouldn't look like her burn all over my body.
When I was eight or nine, my aunt bought an old Scout. I can't remember if it was my cousin or me (probably me) who named it "The Old Blue Heap". I think she bought it in part to show her ex husband how poor she was as much as having a car her teenage daughter couldn't whip around town too fast in it. Well, since we live in West Virginia, there are a lot of hills everywhere. When we were going up a hill in the next town there was this man running along the Scout waving. We all turned and waved to him. Then we saw him still waving. We thought he was being friendly, so we waved again. He continued to run along side us and we hit one of the only stoplights in the town. He was huffing and puffing and signaled for us to roll down the window. I think it was the gas tank that was dragging on the ground. Whatever the case, we had to go home, and since everything was closed that day, we just went to go shopping in our car, not my aunt's vehicle.
One of the last times I remember Veteran's Day shopping, my aunt decided we were going to go to the big mall in Pittsburgh. She and my mother were country girls and hated to drive in the "city" of 35,000 that is an hour away from where they grew up. So, that year instead of Mom going along, it was my aunt, her ex-husband, my cousin, and me. We made my second trip to Pittsburgh (2 1/2 hours away -- my first trip was in first grade when we went on a field trip to the zoo and our bus broke down on the way home.). The mall was amazing to me as a 10 year old from a town of about 1500. There were escalators, which looked fun, but I was actually terrified of them! Mom had been trying to get me to find a pair of boots for a long time as we lived in the snowiest town in West Virginia, but it wasn't until we were at that mall that I found a pair -- moon boots. My aunt questioned me -- was I SURE my mother would be okay with them? I told her Mom would just be happy I bought boots. Sure enough, that's what I heard my mother say into the phone later.
That is the last Veteran's Day Christmas shopping kickoff I remember. My cousin graduated high school that next spring and for whatever reason our tradition wasn't continued. I always think of Veteran's Day as when the shopping season begins. Some people think it's too early to think Christmas, but that's when we started storing gifts in closets and in others' homes until the tree would go up in December and the secret surprises could be wrapped and tucked beneath the twinkling tree.
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