A Christmas Memory

This is a reread of a favorite Christmas story that I first read two years ago. Truman Capote wrote a beautiful Christmas story based on some special times he experienced as a seven-year-old. He was living with older relatives including his beloved sixty-something cousin, Miss Sook. She was a little childlike and sheltered from the world. However, Miss Sook knew how to have fun and had a generous heart. He recounts the holiday events of making fruitcakes and homemade gifts, and decorating the Christmas tree with their own artwork. His older cousin put humor, warmth, and love into the special times they shared during the Christmas season. She gave Truman the gift of love when he must needed it, and some lovely memories to carry through his life. This is a heartwarming gem that will bring a smile to both children and adults.

A lovely and bittersweet childhood memory. The resounding message is to cherish the time you have with your loved ones and never take a moment for granted! Growing up and aging is an inescapable part of life, but it's so important not to lose sight of the most important people that make us who we are.

This book is about Buddy’s (Truman Capote) life as a 7 year old boy living with his relatives in Alabama. In the beginning Sooke, his favorite cousin, and Buddy start looking for ingredients for the ingredients for fruitcakes to make for people for Christmas. While making the fruitcakes Sooke gives Buddy whiskey and they both get drunk. This makes the relatives mad. On Christmas Day Buddy and Sooke make each other kites because they can’t afford anything else. They are happy with their kites. At the end Buddy gets sent back to live with his mom and it was his last Christmas with his friend. He was sent to military school and was unhappy there. Sooke keeps making her fruitcakes. Eventually, Buddy gets a letter saying
SPOILERS

Hacía tiempo que no leía nada de Capote y, teniendo en cuenta lo mucho que me había gustado una de sus recopilaciones de relatos, Música para camaleones; me moría de ganas por hincarle el diente a esta pequeña joyita, ¡y una de Navidad, nada más y nada menos!
Siendo un relato tan corto, lo mejor que podéis hacer es ir a ciegas. Es bonito, las cosas como son; también muy triste. Y es que la pluma de Capote tenía algo mágico, un punto de magnetismo que consigue que sólo pienses en seguir leyendo. ¿Qué, os animáis a descubrir la historia de Buddy y su amiga?

5★
“The black stove, stoked with coal and firewood, glows like a lighted pumpkin. Eggbeaters whirl, spoons spin round in bowls of butter and sugar, vanilla sweetens the air, ginger spices it; melting, nose-tingling odors saturate the kitchen, suffuse the house, drift out to the world on puffs of chimney smoke. In four days our work is done.”

How could anyone read this without a sense of nostalgia? Even if you never lived in a place with a fireplace or a wood stove or made any kind of holiday food, you can imagine what it must have been like for little Truman Capote, for this is his Christmas and his elderly relative who is making her annual fruitcakes.

He is seven, she is sixty-something and they are the best of pals. We’re told there are others in the household, but they don’t figure in this gorgeous little story of scrimping and saving all year for the money to buy the ingredients.

“Lovely dimes, the liveliest coin, the one that really jingles. Nickels and quarters, worn smooth as creek pebbles. But mostly a hateful heap of bitter-odored pennies.”

I loved his descriptions of the coming of winter and trekking with her through the frozen woods as they prepared for Christmas. It’s a bittersweet story, and “Sook”, as he actually called the real woman, Nanny Rumbley Faulk, made such an impact that it obviously remained with him forever. This is the cover of one edition of the book, and it’s a photograph of the two of them.


Photograph of Truman Capote and his beloved Sook, Nanny Rumbley Faulk

What a delight for anyone who loves seeing small children and old people do what they do best – love each other and be kind to the world.

You can enjoy the story here;
http://www.sailthouforth.com/2009/12/...

And you can watch the film with Geraldine Page on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQGEU...

Another reviewer, Cynda, posted a link to the illustrations from this edition.
https://www.tygertale.com/2015/12/11/...

A very knowledgeable man, an English teacher, told me that a great piece of literature does not have to be 800 pages. It could just as well be three stanzas of poetry, a two page short story, or a hundred page book. The size of a work does not matter, only the contents, characters, and style of writing.

Since my junior year in college, which was nearly forty years ago, I have tried to read Truman Capote's short story, "A Christmas Memory" at least once a year...either on Thanksgiving or Christmas and occasionally, on both Holidays.

It is in my opinion, one of the greatest pieces of literature I have ever read. It is one of the few short stories that I put on the same level as a Hemingway's short story; even though their styles are so, so different.

Mr. Capote was one of the greatest writers of the second half of the 20th century. His short novel, "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and "In Cold Blood" are 'masterpieces' and I do not use that word loosely.

"A Christmas Memory" is no less a masterpiece. It is writing at its very best. The characters, including Queenie, the dog, are beautifully realized and the Alabama back woods have never been better portrayed and depicted. The interchange between Buddy and his older cousin are breathtaking and touching. The writing is stunning.

"A Christmas Memory" was a perfect start to this Christmas morning 2017.

I first heard A Christmas Memory on the radio sometime in the 1970's, read by Truman Capote. I was caught and held at once by the eerie quality of his voice, and as I listened to his words, it seemed to me that his voice was the only possible medium through which this southern-gothic Christmas tale could be properly rendered. His voice, the story: all of a piece; yet the written form allows me a langorous repetition of some of his most beautiful sentences. Nothing quite like it.

“Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago. Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house in a country town. A great black stove is its main feature; but there is also a big round table and a fireplace with two rocking chairs placed in front of it. Just today the fireplace commenced its seasonal roar. A woman with shorn white hair is standing at the kitchen window. She is wearing tennis shoes and a shapeless gray sweater over a summery calico dress. She is small and sprightly, like a bantam hen; but, due to a long youthful illness, her shoulders are pitifully hunched. Her face is remarkable—not unlike Lincoln’s, craggy like that, and tinted by sun and wind; but it is delicate, too, finely boned, and her eyes are sherry-colored and timid. “Oh my,” she exclaims, her breath smoking the windowpane, “It’s fruitcake weather!”

“Always, the path unwinds through lemony sun pools and pitch vine tunnels.”

I wish that I could have gone down that lemony sun pool path with seven year old Buddy (Truman Capote) and his cousin Miss Sook. What a delightful woman she was, and he was so fortunate to have had her in is life. Together they made Christmas a joy. Miss Sook made around 30 fruitcakes for people that she knew in town, storekeepers, the mailman, and anyone else that they liked, and this year when they bought whiskey for the cake, they bought it from Mr. HaHa, who gave it to them in exchange for a fruitcake. He was a scary man to approach, but approach him they did.

As they wound down their lemony path, they had to come up with money for making the cake, so they had saved money throughout the year from selling flowers they picked here and there. Movies then were only a dime, and I recall picking flowers to sell so I could go to the movies twice a week, as my mother would only give me a quarter for my allowance, which got me into the movies on Saturdays with some leftover to buy cola, popcorn, Flick's candy, or Milk Duds. Who remembers Flick's candy? They only tasted good to me if I sucked them, otherwise that chocolate was horrible. A few years ago I found them at a store here in town and watched a movie on TV while letting them melt in my mouth. I saved the package.

During those years of picking flowers for the Sunday matinees, I found a fenced in yard that had no lawn, just flowers everywhere, and I asked the woman who gardened if I could have some to sell. She allowed me to pick some, but not enough to continue this practice, since she loved looking at her flowers too.

To gather up enough money to make fruitcakes each year, Buddy and Miss Sook held rummage sales, “sold buckets of hand-picked blackberries, jars of homemade jam and apple jelly and peach preserves,” and as I already said, flowers that they gathered from different places were also sold. The 40s and 50s were a time when peaches tasted like peaches, when jam tasted like the fruit it was made from, and so my grandmother made the best peach jam, just as I am sure Miss Sook had.

This was Truman Capote’s childhood memory, and it is so beautifully written, and one of the best Christmas stories ever. Miss Sook was rather eccentric, like the woman in the book “Housekeeping” by Marilynne Robinson who took care of children. I love eccentric people like this, and I wish that I had them in my life when I was a child. I remember so little of my Christmases, and like Truman Capote I was given mostly clothes.

Sook's Fruitcake Recipe
Sook's Famous "Christmas Memory" Fruitcake

2 1/2 lb Brazil nuts
2 1/2 lb White and dark raisins;
-mixed
1/2 lb Candied cherries
1/2 lb Candied pineapple
1 lb Citron
1/2 lb Blanched almonds
1/2 lb Pecan halves
1/2 lb Black walnuts
1/2 lb Dried figs
1 tb Nutmeg
1 tb Cloves
2 tb Grated bitter chocolate
8 oz Grape jelly
8 oz Grape juice
8 oz Bourbon whisky
1 tb Cinnamon
1 tb Allspice
2 c Butter
2 c Sugar
12 Eggs
4 c Flour

Cut the fruits and nuts into small pieces, and coat them
with some of the flour. Cream the butter and sugar
together, adding one egg at a time, beating well. Add the
rest of the flour. Add the floured fruits and nuts, spices,
seasoning, and flavorings. Mix by hand. Line a large cake
tin with wax paper, grease, then flour. Pour the mixture
into the pan and put it in a steamer over cold water.
Close the steamer and bring the water to a rolling boil.
Lower the heat and steam the cake for about
four-and-one-half hours. Preheat oven to around 250
degrees, and bake for one hour.
From "Sook's Cookbook" and made famous
in Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory".