A Christmas During WW II
(s/o Edward Stanley Jobe, gs/o Edgar Payne Jobe, gt gs/o William Wesley Jobe, 2nd gt gs/o John F. 'Sorrell' Jobe, 3rd gt gs/o Daniel Jobe and Mourning Pryor, 4th gt gs/o Samuel Job and Dorcas MacKay)
I have thought and thought about Christmas memories and I only have one that I can recall with any degree of accuracy and much fondness. During WWII all sorts of things were in short supply especially toys and toys made of metal. I wanted a train - an electric train! There were no trains in any of the dime stores (dime stores are no longer around). We had two in Orange (this would be Orange, Texas) during that time. According to my mother, my dad came home one night very happy - he had found a train. A real electric train. He found it, of all places in a furniture store - Conn's. They were using it as a decoration in a store window. It was part of a Christmas scene - an electric train at the base of a Christmas tree around which were presents. Dad went into the store and asked the manager if it was for sale. The manager agreed to sell it for $25.00 but only after the store closed on Christmas Eve. That was 5:00PM. Dad stayed until the store closed and bought my electric train. You need to remember that $25.00 was about 60% of my dad's pay for that week. He brought it home and did not tell me. That night I went to sleep and dreamed the dreams of children at Christmas times. The next morning, about the break of day, I woke up and ran into the living room- kitchen. Our house was very small! There was a real electric train complete with tracks, cars and a transformer. I ran the train until the engine and transformer was too hot to touch. I later found out from my mother that after I went to sleep on Christmas eve dad played with the train for a log time after he had set it up. Mother said that she had to make him stop for fear of waking all of us kids up before Christmas morning. That train was a large expense for my family and I realized it because all of us kids knew the value of a dollar or should I say a dime.
