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MERRY CHRISTMAS 2003

and complete greetings of the season to everyone.

May Peace and Justice prevail in our world.

I’m not sure why or how it happens but I’ve pretty much always been able to get people to open up to me. I do try to listen and have learned from Dale Carnegie that people often like to talk about their lives and their experiences. This is particularly true as they get older and IF they can remember.

Enter Margaret McDonnell Pastore, of suburban L.A., but originally from Brooklyn (pre-marriage) and then later on the Bronks (post-marriage and pre-L.A.). Peg, as she became know to me, is a Grandma with two kids of her own and five grandkids; and a widow.

Peg came to my attention as a fellow guest at a retirement dinner for a mutual friend held at one of the better steak restaurants in San Antonio. It was by simple circumstance that we wound up talking to each other on the line for the cash bar at the event. She was originally speaking with the woman in front of her and I recognized an accent sweet to my ears but too often neither heard nor particularly admired in Texas.

I knew I’d be able to talk with her once she paid for two double single-malt Scotches, neat, and then sat alone at one of the long tables that had been set up for the guests.

I approached her, complimented her on her accent, chatted a little, and then asked her connection to the guest of honor. She explained that he was a friend of her deceased husband and that he had been very kind to her when her husband died in 1998.

She kept looking past me and didn’t seem to want to engage in any further chit-chat. I figured I’d give it one more shot at being Texas hospitable and asked, “What part of Brooklyn are you from?”

“How do you know I’m from Brooklyn?” she said.

“Just a guess on my part.”, I replied, smiling slightly.

“Originally from Bay Ridge. Went to Fort Hamilton High School and then to college at Hofstra on Long Island. I didn’t think I had an accent anymore, particularly not a Brooklyn one.”

“I think there are some faint traces. Do you get back often?”

Peg replied but there wasn’t much content in our conversation chatter. I told her that I have a lot of good memories about growing up in Brooklyn, and have written about them; and that I just like to hear people’s remembrances of the place. I gave it one last shot again as she was sipping on the Scotch, “Do you have any particularly interesting memories of growing up there?”
Her look back at me seemed to say “You’re not going to go away easy are you?” She took yet another sip.

“The best times and the worst times in Brooklyn were the holidays… particularly Christmas.” she started off. “Things are so different for me now. Back then there wasn’t much and we were happy with whatever we got. Now it seems everything is ‘gimmie, gimmie, gimmie’. I can’t blame then though, everything is an entitlement. They don’t understand tough times. They don’t seem to appreciate life.”

I didn’t ask who “they” were; I figured she’d get around to it.

She continued, “My father worked on the Brooklyn docks and sometimes things were good and sometimes they weren’t. He had five mouths to feed and a fondness for drink and the numbers. We were all happy to just get the things we would now call ‘needs’. My Mom managed him, us kids, the house and took care of the needs.”

“My Grandma used to say that good kids got toys for Christmas and children who weren’t so good got socks, underwear, and coal. She was wrong. I’ve come to realize that it is simply a case of economics. You get what can be afforded and sometimes all that can be afforded are the need items… sometimes some of them but maybe not all of them.”

“We always got socks, pajamas, under-garments; seldom were there toys. My sister made up that Santa brought the toys and Undie-Elves brought the ‘need’ things. It was better than what my Grandma told us. Besides, we just couldn’t see Santa carrying around underpants on his sleigh. It was our way of coping and overcoming tough times. We used to kid about it… “The wonders of Undie-Elves.” Even today we still send each other a pair of cotton, control-top, underpants, always the wrong size, each Christmas.”

“In High School and then in College I became more aware of what people wore under their clothes and the exchanges with Kathy, my sister, via the Undie-Elves, became more interesting. Working at the “5 and dime” kept us in cotton panties and gave us some money to treat each other at Christmas. My Mom saw us as foolish and wasteful spending money on fancy panties. Her bloomers were a funny pink and never wore out. I’m not sure she always wore them. We used to call the fancy panties we got “Frenchies” and used to laugh at how the Undie-Elves knew our sizes and was able to go all the way to Paris to get them. They weren’t really from Paris… just from May’s or A&S downtown.”

“At the dorm at Hofstra, most all the girls were fun. We had some great times. Most of the girls were trying to get a M.R.S. designation so things were always pretty light. We seemed to share everything and you never knew if you were gonna get yours back. If you had anything ‘special’ you had to keep it separate.”

“One of the things we were willing to share and loan, much to my mother’s chagrin, was clean underwear. We called it “dibs on drawers”. When all of us ran out, sometimes rather than do laundry, we would go into the hall and yell “Undie-Elves are goin’ to Sears.” and as many as could would get in the car and go there to get some underwear. We were all so daring… we would have lot’s of fun and tease each other to go wild with “out-of-the-ordinary” underclothes.”

“Back then it wasn’t so much the material as it was the cut. It wasn’t bloomers and full long-line brassieres any more. It was all fun. Everyone was wearing minis and you had to be with it. The strangest thing was that some of the girls from the far end of Long Island would go, what we call today, “commando”. I don’t know if they were just off the farm or were into the hippie or folk music thing.”

“Commando” like your Mom went “commando?” I asked.

“Technically yes.” she replied and then paused. “I don’t know how Kathy started calling it Undie-Elves though.”

I had a tough time following her thought patterns. She wasn’t exactly linear but she was from Brooklyn, so it was all right.

“Did you go home to Brooklyn much?”

She continued, “It tapered off, though I’d always go home for holidays. Even then, though my sister was married and pregnant, we still did the Undie-Elves thing. I remember the time I gave her the biggest pair of ugly maternity panties I could find… we laughed and laughed even when she threw them back at me and yelled “Your day will come!” Her husband, Jimmy, just looked at us strange and shook his head.”

“At Hofstra I dated a bit but as a senior I met a fellow who I fell madly and wonderfully in love with. It was both wonderful and strange. For Christmas I had planned to get him a nice watch and for the Undie-Elves to get him a pouch from Frederick’s of Hollywood. I expected he would get me something frilly and yet practical. He was like that. Was I wrong. He got me, beautifully wrapped, two dozen pair of white cotton Lollipop panties, two sizes larger than I wear. He explained that this was what he got his mother each Christmas and he thought I’d like them. I was confused by both why he thought I’d like them and by his buying his mother underwear. He was NO Elf. As I look back, I realize that there were other warning signs that I choose to ignore but the end was at hand. I only gave him the pouch. After New Year’s, we were over.”

Being a good sport I got up and got Peg another double.

As much as I was fascinated by the Undie-Elves thing, I tried to bring the conversation back to Brooklyn.

“After graduation did you move back home or back to Brooklyn?”

“Definitely not! I wanted to see things and do things. I got a job as a stewardess for TWA flying out of Kennedy. It was fun and exciting. Me and three other girls shared an apartment in nearby Valley Stream. All of us worked for TWA and someone was always coming or going. For our first Christmas I introduced the concept of Undie-Elves rather than Santa to save us money and to have some innocent fun. That year was a blast! As new stews we were all working Christmas Eve and Day, so we did our exchange on the 23rd and had a fashion show. We got some wild and great stuff. For two of the girls it was like letting the cat out of the bag.”

“The job lasted only eight months and then I moved in with a Bill, a TWA pilot, living in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn. It was so wonderful and thrilling. We were well to do and he pampered me with gifts and outings whenever he could. He quickly adopted the Undie-Elves concept and worked at making it year-round. After we were married, Bill left TWA and started doing more private contract work out of LaGuardia and Teterboro Airports, we moved to the Bronks where he could get to both airports.”

“Often, when he had a layover in a foreign city, he brought me back fancy panties, bras, camisoles, night gowns and such. It wasn’t the things so much as the proof that he was always thinking of me. We loved each other so.”

“In return, I sometimes slipped a pair of my slightly soiled panties into his bag for the trips. He liked that. I also bought all the red-silky-furry-push-up and revealing things men are supposed to like. Bill loved them too, particularly that I would model them and do the runway thing for him. One year I gift wrapped myself in some Saran Wrap but I wound up VERY uncomfortable, Bill was quite excited about it though.”

Peg was rolling!

“When children started coming along, we toned down our own undie-exchanges, but always included presents for them left by the Undie-Elves. It was all part of having the children understand about needs and wants and that the Undie-Elves brought things we needed.”

“When Christina, our oldest, was in the second grade she came home crying one day saying that the other kids laughed at her and made fun when she told them about what the Undie-Elves had brought her for Christmas. I just held her and told her that we were right and that the other kids weren’t smart enough to understand what the Undie-Elves could do for them.”

“When our family moved to L.A., where Bill took a job as a corporate pilot, Undie-Elving became even more exciting. Besides styles and cuts we were treated to an entirely new vista with the introduction of leathers and latex. While we located a shop that would make customized and personalized under-garments, we never got very far into it.”

“Both my sister and I have always kept Undie-Elves for Christmas in our families. As our children have gotten older and had children of their own, we have personally kept it going and sometimes around the holidays refer to each other with the prefix “Elf”. We all seem to make it a little different but it ALWAYS has to include at least two pair of underpants.”

“When Christina and her sister Jessie, were in college I’d do the Undie-elf thing each Christmas. One year the package got lost and Christina raised holy hell for my having a senior moment and forgetting about her and her needs. It was cute.”

“When Bill died I was devastated, empty, and pretty much without direction. I thought “What’s the use?” I told the children what I was going to visit an old TWA stew for the holidays; I wasn’tthought, and that I would send a check for each family.”

“Christina finally called and gave me the “get out of it” lecture but I held my ground. When she pretty much gave up, she asked what she and her family could get me for Christmas. I didn’t mean to but wound up playing the martyr and said “Oh don’t bother… nothing really… I’m fine… I know you’re busy sweetheart. Just get me a robe or something.” Then she gave me the whole lecture, on steroids, again. I wound up crying, simply because I didn’t know what to do.”

“About three days later the packages stated arriving. She had worked with the Undie-Elves and they were sending me “need” things and pick-me-ups as fast as they could. In the two weeks before Christmas I must’ve received two dozen packages from catalogues and stores with undies, pot-holders, mittens, socks, hankies, and stuff. I kept thinking that the next thing to come would be a package of Depends.”

“In the middle of the deliveries came a dozen-pack of cheap, VERY-large, pink bloomers obviously purchased from a Wal-Mart or some other white trash purveyor. The very last package had a pre-paid phone card and a thong. Well that did it. The Undie-Elves and Christina got me out of my funk and had me realize that while Bill was gone I still had family that needed me and loved me.”

I still wasn’t getting the Brooklyn stuff I wanted but I had become pretty captivated by her story.

Just at that moment, Jack, the honoree, came by the table and after some hugs and handshakes; he asked if we were having a good time. Without a sub-second of hesitation Peg said “We were just talking about growing up in Brooklyn and family traditions for Christmas. It is delightful to reminisce after all these years.”

Jack smiled and said we he was glad we were having a good time. He then said “Excuse me Ken while I take Peg to meet some people that probably knew Peg’s Bill when he was flying.” Without another word they were off.

I didn’t see Peg the rest of the evening and, after thinking it over, I probably got a pretty good story about Peg’s Brooklyn. How I would use the concept of Undie-Elves is another matter.

Everyone’s Brooklyn story is different.
[end] © Copyright by Ken Thompson – 2003.