Hommel Mangas
I stopped by the farmhouse to drop off some photos of my grandparents that my sister borrowed for my Dad’s funeral — at the end of May 2020. There’s no need to be in a hurry about getting all your errands done in one or two years, you know.
In the brown paper gift bag, which I had placed the photo and frames for safe-keeping, I asked my hubby to purchase a few cigars for my Uncle Steve. At our Hommel Reunion this past August, I pulled out my phone to show my Uncle Steve my most recent artful photo of my 5-month-old grandson John. Asleep on a brown carpet, John is wearing khaki pants with beige suspenders, white button-up collared dress shirt, and white and beige striped bow-tie. With his brown Irish tweed flat cap covering his eyes, I placed a hand-rolled Macanudo cigar in John’s hand next to an open box of perfectly aligned and packed cigars in Court Café tubes. It reminded me of a grown man’s box of crayons.
Before I receive any hate mail — I, of course, do not promote smoking, especially when it’s my 5-month-old grandson. But the Irish cap is similar to one my Dad use to wear and my Dad did smoke an occasional cigar. Back in the day, as an elementary kid, I could buy my Dad a Christmas present: Homemade brand hand-rolled, leaf cigar for 25 cents at Haag’s Drug Store, next to the old Danner’s Store — what they now call the Greenwood Centre at South Madison Avenue.
Just to change it up, some years I would buy him fancy-colored guitar picks for a nickel each at Brinks Music Store when they were located next to Commiskey’s Drug Store.
Anyway, when my Uncle Steve Hommel saw the photo of John gripping a Macanudo, he instantly said, “Hey, those are the good ones — John needs to share!”
So, we did share — ‘erst a few months later. (I apologize to my cousin Sandy — but I know your Dad technically never actually lights them and smokes them.)
It’s funny what the memory pulls up around Thanksgiving and Christmas time. My Dad always asked for the same thing from us seven kids: white athletic socks, Spanish peanuts and orange slices.
Last Wednesday, my 93-year-old mother-in-law Carmen relished how she looked forward to receiving one fresh orange every Christmas in the late 1930s and early ’40s. Our Hommel family always had oranges and walnuts out for Christmas treats in the 1970s. Sometimes there’d be one stuck in each Christmas stocking. I’ve repeated this gift-giving some years for our daughters — even though oranges can be easily be picked up at any grocery these days.
Even amongst the heart-warming memories of past Christmases, the age-old messages and songs to worship in a packed church continue to deliver and fill me up with love, joy, peace and hope.
And if I smoked — I’d smoke to that.
Janet Hommel Mangas grew up on the east side of Greenwood. The Center Grove area resident and her husband are the parents of three daughters. Send comments to [email protected].
