Join me for a 2024 republishing of a 2012 college class project essay about the 1989 Christmas that most likely remains the most meaningful, impactful, emotional, and special Christmas of my life - shared again today on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of the events contained therein! Today is also the 30th anniversary of our getting the Sega 32X as teenagers for Christmas 1994, and today was also my very first time ever celebrating Hanukkah.....so a pretty big day for me. Nevertheless, here's the story of 1989!
Enjoy!
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THE FIRE AND THE GLORY
(And the Unfortunate Truth of what happened to the Transformers)
By: St. John, of Nerd Noise Radio
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 24 INTO MONDAY, DECEMBER 25, 1989
1411 22ND ST. APT 3, DES MOINES
We lived in the ghetto. We lived in apartment three of a stand-alone, three story, twelve-unit apartment building. Apartment three was in the northeast corner of the bottom floor. Apartment ten, which will be important later, was in the southwest corner of the top floor, as far away from three as possible. It was Christmas Eve, and I couldn’t sleep. My brother, Jesse, and I, eight and nine years old respectively, shared a room, and my bed was right under the window, affording me a good view of the southeast night sky. I lay there, sleepless, watching the sky for any sign of a certain airborne, venison propelled carriage, commandeered by its cheerfully corpulent custodian. Instead, all I was presented with was a swath of stars, muted by the inner-city’s glow, winking back at me as if to assure me of their shared vigil. Rising starkly against the night sky was the KCCI weather beacon, oblivious to such trivial matters, singularly focused to the point of mania with whether it was going to be warmer, cooler, dry, or wet. At long last, the search for Santa proved sufficiently exhausting, and I fell asleep.
Next thing I knew, I was awakened very fervently by one of my parents, the other having an even harder time with Jesse, telling us to get up in a hurry…there was a fire. At first, I received this with skepticism, suspecting a clever ruse was afoot, and we were about to be herded out to a pleasant parade of presents. But when I made it to the living room and received my first whiff of smoke, I realized this was no ruse at all. Entering the hallway was surreal and almost dream-like. It was slightly hazy, there were a flurry of people, most of whom I recognized as other tenants, but could neither name, nor assign to units. Firemen were also among those in the haze, trying to see us to safety. With that same end in mind, Mom vigorously herded us out to our 1975 Chevy Nova, while Dad ran back in to secure a uniquely valuable item.
As it turns out, apartment ten was the one that was on fire, and since we were completely diagonal from it, horizontally and vertically, we were not in imminent danger. Of course, the fire department wasn’t about to take any chances, and so they were evacuating everybody. Moreover, I do not believe that my parents were aware yet that the danger was so remote, and thus, Dad’s flight back into the house, even if not in reality, was in perception, and therefore, intent, a mad plunge back into mortal danger. Meanwhile, Mom, Jesse, and I were seated in the car, seeing only the red glow in the sky, and the commotion below (the building itself blocking our view of the inferno.) While I do not remember this particular detail myself, I receive it in good faith from reliable sources that at one point during our automotive exile, I spontaneously broke into a chorus of Billy Joel’s 1989 hit, “We didn’t start the fire”, demonstrating for all present just what kind of grasp this nine year old had on the gravity and severity of the situation playing itself out before him. So transfixed were we with the scene that we nearly failed to notice Dad run towards, around, and finally behind the car to load a blanket wrapped something into the trunk. After an unknown period of time, the all clear was given, and we were able to return, but not before Dad rushed the unknown object back into the house ahead of us. I do not recall having any trouble falling back to sleep, but I guess Dad never did, opting to stay awake in the living room for fear of any possible reignition.
When Mom and Dad woke us up around seven that morning, the customary hour for presents in our house, it was with full assurance that there was no emergency this time, but instead, it was time to get up and unwrap things. So, we padded out in our PJs, and took up residence in the shadow of the majestic old aluminum tree, awash in the glow from its trusty sidekick, the color wheel; buzzing its way through the cycle of red, green, blue, and yellow. Blue was my favorite, yellow my least. Once nested around the tree, the customary organized chaos ensued, and the neatly wrapped packages surrendered their carefully concealed secrets. We received some Transformers from my Uncle Paul. These will be important later in the story. There were also several other things, which I cannot remember. Then Dad handed Jesse and I each a squarish package to unwrap. They were game cartridges for the NES – Nintendo Entertainment System. His was Donkey Kong Jr., and mine was Excitebike. This revelation threw the room into confusion…okay, that’s overstating it. But it did cause Jesse and I to look at each other in confusion. What gives?
Clearly this was all a mistake, so I felt it was my job to straighten Dad out. What follows is my correction address, if not verbatim, very, very close to it: “Oh wow! Thank you, Dad! Thank you very much! But these are Nintendo games. We have an Atari. You see, Nintendo is a way cooler, more powerful system, and our Atari just can’t play them.” Everyone, including yours truly, agrees that it’s the “you see” part that makes that so great. As I was making my attempt to bring clarity to the situation, Dad’s way of handling it was to just sit there and let the grin on his face get bigger and bigger. After I was done, he allowed the words to hang in the air for a moment before playing dumb and saying “Oh, my mistake! Well, here you go.” And he reached back behind the couch and pulled out a much larger wrapped package. Our [to that point] greatest hopes, and dreams, and aspirations were then realized when an NES emerged from underneath the wrapping paper. This was not only a Nintendo, it was the Nintendo, the one that came with the Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt combo cartridge, two controllers, and the “zapper” light gun.
I don’t remember anything from the next thirty minutes. This period of time is a black out, it is lost to me. All I know about it is that Jesse and I went absolutely berserk. The sheer magnitude of the joy and excitement we felt must’ve temporarily taken my long term memory recording device off-line like a lightning strike to a power grid. Again, I have it on reliable report that I was running and jumping up and down through the hall between the living room, and bedrooms shouting repeatedly “I can’t believe it’s mine!” So, after a brief, but insufferable waiting period while the NES was set up, Jesse and I eagerly jumped in and started playing. It was almost too good to be true. It didn’t seem real. Or perhaps more accurately, it was more that everything did seem so real. When you were used to Atari 2600, then even the [to us now] basic NES graphics, sound , and depth seemed nothing short of magical and epic. Now, of course, this wasn’t the first time we had experienced the glory that was the NES, we had friends in the complex that had them, and let us play. WeWe also had numerous opportunities to bask in the mind-altering glow at several stores in the area. But this was different because this was ours! We didn’t have to go home; we were home! We didn’t have to covet, it was ours! Now we could play it anytime we wanted! Oh, the magic, the greatness, the glory!
At some point, we goaded Mom into trying Mario, and for her first amazing feat, she plunged headlong into a fatal collision with the game’s very first obstacle, a goomba. After getting the hang of the goombas, jumping on or around them, things went smoothly, until about thirty seconds later, when she encountered the game’s very first pit. It proved too alluring to resist. HerHer difficulty with the game was probably for the best, though, as our eagerness to reclaim the controllers quickly eroded any patience the spectacle produced. A short time later, we were told that Uncle Paul was on his way and were instructed to demonstrate that we deeply appreciated the transformers. The transformers! That’s right, we had totally forgotten! So, when the knock came, I rushed up, snatched the transformer from its place, answered the door, and immediately launched into a profusion of half-sincere thank you’s. To help underscore the half-honest interest, and completely dishonest zeal, I decided to demonstrate the toy’s transformative powers, when the unthinkable happened…it broke! I stood locked in shock and horror, as time phenomenologically lurched to a halt…but then the moment passed, time resumed, and I went back to playing Nintendo. Eventually, Paul tried his hand at it as well, producing nearly identical results to Mom’s misadventures.
And that was Christmas 1989, the most memorable Christmas of my life!
Now, it did not take long for details of the fire to emerge. Apparently, the mother came home drunk, and fell asleep on the couch with a lit cigarette in her mouth. This set off the chain of events which led to me singing “We didn’t start the fire” from a parked car in the middle of the night. The woman was okay, except for a little singe. Nobody died in the fire, but this woman and her son lost everything. Their apartment and all it contained were completely destroyed. Moreover, the apartments directly below received major water damage, and the other apartments on the third floor received major smoke damage. The hallway was rendered an oily, pitch black smear from the smoke and heat, and the smoke detector, which had faithfully sounded the alarm from its ceiling perch died in the line of duty, melting into a gruesome caricature, and falling to the floor.
The boy from apartment ten was more or less our age. We had made his acquaintance, probably through playing in the halls, but never got close to him. I don’t even remember his name. It also emerged that we were not going to be the only kids in the building that got a Nintendo that year. He was going to as well. Of course, his was ruined in the fire, sitting under what used to be a Christmas tree, and it all came to naught. They moved away after that, and I never knowingly saw or heard from him or about him again. I hope that the experience hasn’t scarred him, and I hope his life has gone better since. I hope his mother got straightened out. I hope that he got his Nintendo. I would love to get the chance to speak with him again, but not knowing his name, or anything about him, what are the odds?
The contrast between his Christmas and mine, and his parents and mine are as stark as the white painted walls on our first floor hallway, and the murky black smudge that was the third floor. Our day of extreme joy, contrasted with his day of pain and fear, the respect and admiration for my parents engendered by the contrast with his mother is a paradox that will remain with me til the day I die. His mother got drunk and started a fire, which destroyed their home, and his Nintendo, damaged several others’ homes, and most likely ruined all their Christmases that year. My mother whisked us out to the safety of the car. My father, not knowing he was safe, thinking he was risking his life, and indeed, risking his life in spirit, if not in truth, rushed back in to rescue our NES from the inferno; preferring to face peril…for the sake of a mere video game, simply because he knew the NES would mean the world to his two boys. All these things serve to make the memory of Christmas 1989 at 1411 22nd Street, in the final analysis, a very bittersweet one, and yet, among my most cherished.
THE END
