Christmas Eve, 2023: Remember Sacrifices & Do Likewise
Remember Your Past & Those That Sacrificed Year In & Year Out
When you look into the past, tears may flow surrounding those most treasured people and moments that are so visible through a candlelight flicker inside your mind. Those beautiful moments that make grown men puddle up, and women ball, just from a few notes in a song, or a random place we shopped, or drive by, that reminds us of what we have lost in those special friends and family. One cannot decipher better how those images are seared on our brains. There is a chemical reaction, a permanency, that we do not want to end – but yet – we know it does, as we close our eyes and it fades into a memory we hang on to, but every year it gets harder to grasp.
What this particular Christmas could mean for us all, depends on how dire one decides this trek we are on, is. Those memories should provide us absolute resolve that those people, and their deeds, should not be forgotten; or lost inside this evil maelstrom of madness that has seized our Republic and the greater Western World. They too would tell that – they are always with you, for that very reason, to fight for all the causes they too wanted to win.
One just found a simple Northwest Indiana Times article from Christmas 1992, regarding my mother’s consignment shop: Neat Repeats. Published 31 years ago, well before the internet was ubiquitous, or even searchable. (Of course its legacy upload – but it proves how she was the co-owner (she was THE OWNER). Being published on December 25, 1992, it was marketing pitch for a host of consignment and resale shops in the area, and included these minor quotes, highlighting my aunt (I suspect that was my mother’s doing):
"Items usually sell for one-third their original price," said Linda Clark [my aunt], who with her sister, Donna Powers, co-owns Neat Repeats Fashion Exchange in Lowell…
Party wear for women and for children are also big sellers at Neat Repeats. “People who want to have their children's pictures taken for the holidays want a party dress or suit that will be worn one time," Clark said.”
Here is a snippet too from that timeframe. I actually wrote up this business plan (I uploaded it to Docstoc or Dropbox, hell, I don’t exactly remember where, but it has been repurposed by someone else) for her business at its finality in 2005-6. There was a hope for meager loan - but there was some issues that could not be overcame at the time. But, I sat at her shop during her first bout with cancer in July 2004, after getting a minor reprieve regarding my probationary period.
Why do I show you this?
BECAUSE - we all have people and folks whose memories are in pictures, and articles, and obits that we might not even be aware of. Their memories exist - in a internet world where they never, ever did before. I just found the above article today and immediately archived it.
My grandmother (Mildred Clark) died on March 11, 1992, the same year as the article above. (I was dropped by Purdue University that December 1992 due to my failure to make acceptable grades. Christmas has been hard before - on Christmas Eve 1997, I got my first car repossessed, ‘93 Toyota Camry. In 2007, my 91’ Toyota Corolla gave out (fuel line) at Christmas, and all the tips from XMAS delivering the same NWI Times went to a different used car instead of presents for any of us. The 2008 financial crisis would soon gobble up most of middle America thereafter, including us. )
For those that don’t know, at the end of her life in 2011, tragically, her sister was not much amendable to me obtaining pictures and memories I sorely would have wanted. Those were the breaks had in the last 9 months of her life with terminal metastatic brain cancer. But I saved everything I could.
So, at Christmas, and other holidays, like many do with their moms and dads, I think of her the most. She gave me life. She provided as best she could….you can see, above, very visibly, she didn’t make huge sales revenues.
50% of that goes back to the consignor. The expenses to operate a shop were in the $8-10,000 per year range at that time. Somehow, we survived even prior to that. I did odd jobs, such as the time allowed, as she cleaned the Lowell Public Library from around 1994 until mid-2010.
During the Christmas holidays at Neat Repeats, Donna played Christmas songs from mid-November until Christmas day. She added décor to the shop. She wore Christmas-y outfits - greens and reds, generally speaking. She was a positive soul against a mountain of shit that never ceased in her entire life.
And I failed her. And feel that at every. last. single. holiday.
We, the United States of America, are at WORLD WAR NOW TOO. Many don’t even know it. Many will indeed die barely even aware of the reasons it even took place.
How their leaders sold them out.
Their media conned them for years and years and years.
And even those of us aware, are facing an overwhelming task to seize back control of this Republic and save Western Civilization in the process.
[No PRESSURE FOLKS!]
My mother was never a weakling. She didn’t complain about walking several miles daily while her dickhead husband was gallivanting around on her in the late 1970s-80s. She didn’t talk badly about the prior consignment shop owner, who she worked for (from 1983-1989). Alice was a semi-socialite (her husband was the town lawyer) that told her she needed to work on her English. (This because my mom had just come back from Tennessee, and sounded like a hick. So did I. And still do.)
I bring up my mother so much because:
If this country had even 1/2 of her persistence, her motivation, her spirit, her guts we would win this WAR FOR THE WORLD.
SO, it is very hard to see people with high education and wealth aplenty sit back and think they are not going to get sheared like a sheep right before they slaughter them too. Their enclaves will get overrun too.
Dummies that will blame everyone based on characteristics that matter not.
So, at this Christmas, people best know who they are fighting for: their families, their friends, their Constitution, their way of life. IT ALL MATTERS.
Else this WHOLE MESS will be over very quickly.
The most positive thing I can offer: YOU HAVE THIS CHRISTMAS to make a final dent in the hard-headed minds and weak souls that can’t figure out what is at STAKE.
I have implored people so much.
It’s now up to you to decide on HOW OUR COUNTRY, the United States, is remembered.
Oh my God, this post about your life & mother is amazing. I completely feel every word printed. I have an experience in my life with a brother who had a clothing store. Anyway, this is so good you need to find a way to get it on Ronald or CFP or GETTR or somewhere. People need this & include the picture. I would do it but I don't know how (can you believe it) That love, that is Christmas!
Thanks for sharing this. Merry Christmas.