Plain Talk: Christmas Day Stories (263)

Episode 263 – Plain Talk: Christmas Day Stories

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Dr. Jim Tew: Podcast listeners, this is a unique event. It's the Christmas season. It's a really great thing, and it's an awkward thing for me because I don't really have a lot of Christmas-related beekeeping events, but I'm in the Christmas spirit. My entire family is coming to visit me. As much as we can, we're going to have an old-fashioned Christmas, and I'm excited about that. Would you be patient with me and let me have a podcast that's different from anything I've ever done?

This is not going to have a primary beekeeping theme. If it works out and you've got your own Christmas experiences, do I dare say, if you would let me know some of the novel Christmas experiences you've had, and a year from now, I'll see if I can make a podcast out of that. How's that for planning for the future? Listeners, I'm Jim Tew, and I come to you once a week here on Honey Bee Obscura, where I do my best to talk about something to do with plain talk beekeeping. Today is a special segment.

Introduction: Welcome to Honey Bee Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the producers of the Beekeeping Today podcast. Join Jim Tew, your guide through the complexities, the beauty, the fun, and the challenges of managing honeybees. Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honeybees. Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, get ready for some plain talk that'll delve into all things honeybees.

Jim: Throughout all the decades that I've kept bees, there were very few people who knew enough about beekeeping in my family to give me anything related to beekeeping. All I could do was to say that I wanted a particular veil or something, and they would mindlessly buy it for me. Most of my family members were not really into beekeeping at the time, and so they did it with a degree of discomfort. As the years passed, I always struggled with my December articles because beekeeping was not a major Christmas event for me.

I do have one episode that stands out because I did have a significant epiphany, and I changed the way I kept bees. If you're in the mood for listening to me ramble for the next few minutes, here's that story. It must have been in the early '70s, and I was in the final stages of being a passionate woodworker as I was transitioning to the phase that is still lingering even now in my life of being a consistent, dedicated beekeeper. I've told you so often that you must be sick of hearing it, that one of the things that called me to beekeeping was that I looked at that equipment, and I thought, "I can build all this stuff now."

Now, never mind that it honestly cost me considerably more to build it. It was the satisfaction that I got for building a complete beehive from top to bottom, listeners, to include frames. The only thing I bought was wax foundation. It was truly wax foundation that I had to embed with wires. I even built frames for a while. Completely insane to do. You can buy books right now. I've got the old books. I'm sure there's some new books out there telling you all the dimensions and plans for building your own equipment. For some of you, there is that unique satisfaction.

I built that beehive, and I am nurturing those bees in that hive. You get a sense of omnipotence and of satisfaction that this was not something you bought. It was something that you assembled. It's there because of you. Listeners, I built, I don't know, several hundred bottom boards. I built hundreds of deeps and supers, not 900, like 100, maybe 150, and it's just maniacally boring woodwork to do all those cuts manually. I took on the whole concept of building frames, and I bought high-quality pine.

I cut the pieces down, as I recall, for the woodworker who might be listening. I think there were about 17 different saw setups to get those frames put together. I was just on fire on Christmas Day to get away from all the Christmas folderol and get to my duty station outside, where I could get on about the process of building these top bars is what I was doing on that particular day, and it was taking forever. I was out there making the same cut, making the same cut, making the same cut, making the same cut.

I had a stack of partially constructed frame top bars behind me, about enough to fill the trunk of a car. I would go through each one of those top bars and make whatever cut I was having to make. This is what I would like for you to understand. After having built my own equipment for about two years, and after having accumulated all of these parts and pieces, I even built frame assembly jigs. I built solar wax melters. Anything that could be built, I made it. I never built an extractor. I did consider it, but you can't make those out of wood.

That was the stopping point on that project. As I stood there that day, around that mountain of frames, I had a beekeeping/Christmas epiphany. The other one of me inside of me said, "What are you doing? It's Christmas Day, your entire family is in the house, and you're out here in the shop running a saw like this is the most important thing in the world to get these frame top bars built." Just like that, at that moment, I broke. I stopped everything. I knocked the sawdust off, and I went back in the house and ate Christmas cake and sat around all the clutter of new gifts and toys.

I was the oldest in my family. All my cousins, everybody was younger. All the kids were in there with new toys and whatever. I began to act normal. I did finish those top bars, but that was the end of it. I started buying beekeeping equipment after that. I had a Christmas Day epiphany. As I end this sad story, I want to say that not one of those boxes, not one bottom board, nothing survived. I do wish that I had just one deep, one frame of my own equipment that I built all those years ago. It's all gone. You get about seven years out of your beekeeping equipment, and it's all gone.

As I talk to you here, the snow is coming down, and it's classically winter outside, so it looks like it's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas. Don't you have all these stories too? Christmas was one of the happiest days and one of the most exciting days. Some years were off the kilter, and you didn't get what you wanted, or what you got was not exactly what you wanted. My oldest granddaughter was just completely unable to control herself as a young girl. She got a pair of boots that she didn't like, and she just could not stop the tears from coming at the moment that she opened the gift.

It's not because she was rude or unkind. She was just honest. Her mom did everything. We all did everything we could to brighten her up. Some Christmases just don't work for you, do they? If I could get my dad back, just for a short conversation. I haven't thought, and I had my dad down about 15 years. I would like to apologize to him. Now that I'm old and wise, that's somewhat of a joke. He had a bad business year. My dad had a paint supply and wall covering company. I've mentioned over and again that I spent the early years of my life mixing and painting and doing all things to do with house paint.

He had a bad year. I don't know what happened. Dad never kept me in his personal financial loop, but he and some of his employees took my Western Flyer, 24-inch balloon tire bicycle. It had a probably had 25,000 miles on it already, and they completely restored it. They put the pen striping back on. They even made that ridiculous light that was on the front fender work again. The first time you put those old Ray-O-Vac dry cell batteries in, they were going to corrode everything out again.

He put a new basket on it, they straightened the fenders. He had a paint business. It had a top-notch paint job on it, and he gave me that bicycle again as a Christmas gift. I'm like my granddaughter with the boots. There was nothing about that bicycle that was new to me, and I did not really try to keep my disappointment from showing that that was the main thing I got at that Christmas was my bicycle for the second time. I'd like to tell my dad that I have had a 100% change of heart and that would be one of the dearest Christmas gifts to me and my old age, of all the things that I got.

I just did not have the maturity or the understanding to know that Dad was having a lean financial year, and he was having to make ends meet. I did my part not to make him feel any better about what he was having to do. My mom kept saying, "Jimmy, doesn't your bicycle look nice?" I would have no part of it. In lieu of my Dad, I would like to apologize to him through those of you who spend your time listening to me ramble here. Let's take a short break, and I'll come back. We'll hear from our sponsor.

Before you come back, I want to give you a Santa Claus spoiler alert. I can't believe that any young kids are listening, but I'm about to tell you my realization experience. Here's our sponsor

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Jim: Listeners, the world I grew up in does not exist anymore, and that's not a bad thing. I actually like electronic gadgets, and I like nice cars. Even so, the world I grew up in is gone. When I tell you that the day after Christmas, many years ago, I must have been eight or nine, I had some years on me, but I was not an infant. I decided that I'm going to get to the bottom of this Santa Claus thing once and for all. Why does Santa Claus not look exactly the same from one dime store to another? How did he get in so many places?

I began to ask some piercing questions, and I had two younger brothers, and I was not stupid. I didn't want to upset this Santa Claus gift-giving procedure by telling everyone that I had figured it out that there might be some questionability about the reality of Mr. Claus. Without telling anyone, I decided I was going to check out this chimney thing first thing. Why does every Christmas card and the Deep South with snow outside show Santa standing by the fireplace? All we had was a chimney flue for the floor furnace, but that had to be the only way he got in.

I needed to get on the roof and check out this furnace thing, and that I did do. That's why I gave you the caveat that this was going to have a revealing ending to it. If somebody is listening who's not prepared to hear it, please turn away or listen to this later. I climbed up on the roof. That's something I could do in my youth. It's something that we did fairly commonly. It was interesting to sit on the roof at night, and yes, it was dangerous, but yes, you could do it then. No, I wouldn't recommend that any kid get on the roof, especially today with snow up there.

I specifically got up there and went over to the edge of the house and checked out that chimney flue. Failure point number one, no, I didn't fall from the roof, but it was crystal clear to me that no big man with a bag of toys was going to go down that chimney flue and then figure out some way how to bypass the floor furnace and get into my house. That just ain't going to happen. Maybe. Is there a code? Has he checked with someone, and he knows to open the front door? Did they leave the front door open? Is there a man wandering around my house putting out toys at night?

I decided that the day after Christmas, on Christmas morning, I would go out and check for sled marks in the front lawn. There's no snow, so it was clear to me that if a sled as big as Santa's and all of those reindeer lands in my front lawn, it's just going to be a mess on Dad's grass. You know how that ended. It looked like Dad's winter grass. There was not a single sign there. At this time, my street wasn't paved. I didn't live in the boonies, but there was an unpaved street then. He must have landed in the road.

I went out and had a look in the road to see if I could find these deep-trenched sled marks from the runners on the sled, the tracks of the reindeer. I did it early enough that passing cards would not have obliterated it. I'm dragging the story out because exactly how it is. That epiphany I had, cutting frame top bars, well, I had the same one. I thought, "Do I dare say it?" I knew the answer. Let me just word it like that. I knew the answer. From that point on, I became a little bit more of a young man. I still sat on Santa's knee.

I did all the things I should do. I did not tell my goofball brothers a single word about it. I let them have it. Mom and Dad figured it out. I had an affinity for all things mechanical. Once I knew that the jig was up, my dad assigned me the job of assembling everything that had to be assembled for my brothers. Then that passed over into my life with my daughters. I was the assembler. I put together everything they got for Christmas. I put together dollhouses for my daughter. I did everything that I knew I could put together. Dad would just go drink coffee and have a nice time with that.

I had an electric train box that I had an electric train I got one Christmas. As everybody was cleaning up, the electric train box was used to put the Christmas decorations away. I often wondered being the oldest, leaving first, and all that kind of thing. You never know what happened to anything. Every Christmas, I would have the warmest spot in my heart when Mom and Dad would get out that electric train box. The electric train was broken. I still had it, but it was like my bicycle. It was well used and worn and no longer anything novel to me.

There was that box with that happy, smiling boy looking at a brand new train going around that little, short oval on the floor. It just added to Christmas every year by letting me held that warm memory of the year I got the electric train. I don't know what happened to the box. I moved away, married, did all the things I did. One day, someone unknowingly, probably my mom, took that box and tossed it and put everything in a Rubbermaid rubber tote, plastic tote, or something. I don't know. It's gone.

I got an Erector Set one year, and as I'm talking to you, I can look across the room here in the shop on the top shelf and see my Erector Set. I absolutely love that toy. I know you couldn't sell it now because apparently, kids don't know not to put all those pieces in their mouth and to make dangerous things, but I had a great time with my Erector Set. Got my Daisy Eagle BB gun that I was given when I was seven or eight years old. That's about all that remains. When you're the oldest of three boys, everything gets passed down, so nothing really remained.

I'm not really a gun person, but I was given a 22 rifle, Savage Automatic Model 6DL, many years ago. It's not really a high-quality rifle, but it's mine. The thing jammed the first few times I fired it. On Christmas day, I, like a dork, thinking I was mechanically inclined, tore that rifle all to pieces to figure out why it was jamming, and about two days later, terrified, I finally got that thing put back together. That was a huge mistake, not totally unlike the year I got a gasoline-powered model plane. You control the thing with hand grips and cables that went up to the plane.

I didn't spend a single second learning how to operate that thing. I just thought I would naturally know how to do it. I'd seen other people flying them. How hard can it be? I gas that thing up, fired up the glow plug, lit it. I grabbed the control cables to it. That plane took off, flew out to the end of its tether. It flew straight up, flipped in the air, and at about 40 miles per hour, under full power, came right down and smashed into the ground. It took me about 12 minutes to completely destroy the major thing I got for Christmas that year, but all isn't lost.

The engine survived. The plane was destroyed. I played with that engine for the next five, six years. It was the kind of thing where you can cut a finger off, where you could do personal arm, burn yourself, but it was a great little toy, I thought. It did have some of a secondary life. This is enough. I hope that you've had great Christmases too and that some of the pleasant memories remain. It's such a complex, complicated season with so much energy and money and tradition invested in it, I think it's unfair to think that every Christmas should just be a sterling Christmas.

I've enjoyed talking about my bees and my construction project and reminiscing, and all the people that I don't have anymore, and all the Christmases past. It's really pleasant memories. If you've lasted this long, I promise I won't do this again. I'm going to be at the Beekeeping Today Booth, booth number 805, at The North American Honeybee Expo. This is unusual for me, but I plan to be there for this event. If you're visiting the expo, please stop by and talk to us there.

I'd love to see you, and you can see me, and you can give me some advice on what I can do to talk about something related to beekeeping next Christmas. I really, really enjoy doing these podcasts. I hope that it just gives you a moment for us to talk. I look forward to doing it again next week. I'm Jim, telling you bye. Till then.

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