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Gary Nelson A Christmas Story a tradition
at my house Every Christmas I am reminded of my roots
of growing up in Northwest Indiana near Hammond and Gary. It's
not the Christmas-related ripoffs and outrageous crime stories
I hear from family members who still live there. It's not the
tales of wicked snows and bitter temperatures that keep people
locked in their homes like prisoners. It's the annual 24-hour
broadcast of Jean Shepherd's classic movie A Christmas Story. I know you've seen it. The story is about
a young boy and his quest to get an official Red Ryder BB gun. I knew Randy as an adult from the early to
late 1980s. Randy and I attended the same church in Northwest
Indiana where, after the film's release, he was a glorified celebrity
- at least in the church, anyway. Jean Shepherd's Christmas tale is a story
of what it was like to grow up in Hammond, IN, during the 1940s
on Cleveland St. The film features several make-believe stories
of his early childhood when he attended Warren G. Harding Elementary
in Hessville, IN, a section of Hammond. Shepherd cracked up readers for years with
his made-up tales about growing up a poor child in Hammond in
the 1940s. The movie script of A Christmas Story was based on
stories published in Shepherd's 1967 book, In God We Trust, All
Others Pay Cash. In one scene of the movie the old man is at
the kitchen table in the house on Cleveland St. reading a newspaper
story about some "clodhopper in Griffith" who swallowed
a yo-yo. Griffith is a town neighboring Hammond where my mother
lives. Indiana references abound in the movie, but it was actually
filmed in Cleveland, OH. "We needed a (steel) mill town that had
a real downtown section, and nothing like that exists anymore
in Hammond," Shepherd told the Hammond Times newspaper in
1983 shortly after the film's release. "We shot there because it looked right.
It still has a lot of 1940s-style buildings instead of the aluminum
and glass we have today. We couldn't very well shoot the movie
in a Hammond shopping center," he told the Times reporter. Shepherd supplied the voice-over to the film
and makes a cameo appearance as the man who stops Ralphie from
cutting in line at a department store to see Santa. It is one of the great Christmas classics
of all time. I find myself drawn to watch it every year. Although
I'm not old enough to have experienced growing up in Indiana
during the 1940s, the Indiana humor and sarcasm just sits well
with me. I experienced it first-hand growing up in the '70s.
The movie airs each year on TBS for 24 hours
straight from Christmas Eve through Christmas Day. Shepherd wrote
a sequel to the movie, A Summer Story, which was nowhere near
as successful, but quite funny. Jean Shepherd died of natural causes October
16, 1999, in a hospital near his Sanibel Island, FL, home. He authored books including The America of
George Ade; The Ferrari in the Bedroom; In God We Trust, All
Others Pay Cash; a Fistful of Fig Newtons, and Wanda Hickey's
Night of Golden Memories. Shepherd's stories appeared in a variety of
publications, including Mad Magazine and National Lampoon, The
New York Times, Playboy, Mademoiselle, Car and Driver, and Omni.
He was also a columnist for the Village Voice in New York. He attended Indiana University before launching
his radio career as the host of a show named "Rear Bumper."
Early career appearances were on stage in Chicago as a performer
at the Goodman Theatre. He also reportedly performed in various
nightclub acts on Rush St. in Chicago. Shepherd's younger brother, Randy, my friend
from church, told me that most of the action stories Shepherd
wrote were really about Randy, who always appeared in Shepherd's
short stories as the runny-nosed, whiny kid brother. Randy Shepherd was a good storyteller as well
and lived in Northwest Indiana, where the two brothers grew up
until the early 1990s. I heard from other friends from the church
that he had moved to Florida near his brother, Jean. I also heard
that Randy died in the middle 1990s. Many people from Hammond and the Calumet Region
resent Jean Shepherd to this day. Many think he put down their
town. Although Shepherd insisted the characters in his books
were made up as well as the town of Hohman, according to Randy,
the town in the stories was Hammond and the characters were based
on real people the two brothers knew. However, these characters
were so exaggerated they practically were imaginary, Randy said.
Homan is actually one of the main streets in downtown Hammond. Flick from the movie even owns a tavern in
Hessville called Flick's Tap. Cleveland St. and Warren G. Harding
Elementary School do exist in Hammond. It's all there and I'm
reminded of it and of growing up in Northwest Indiana every time
I watch the film. I don't know what you'll be doing, but on Christmas Eve I will invariably be watching A Christmas Story again and again. My kids have grown to like it, too.
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