Posts with the Macy’s tag

Barris Beat

Home for Christmas

Written by Ted Barris on . 1 Comment
78 RPM Decca V-Disc of "I'll Be Home For Christmas" recorded in 1943 by Bing Crosby and re-released by the U.S. War Department the following year.
78 RPM V-Disc of “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” recorded in 1943 by Bing Crosby and re-released by the U.S. War Department the following year.

I walked up the front walk in the darkness of the early evening. I quietly put my luggage down on the front step of my parents’ Los Angeles home and knocked on the door. This was a plan my dad and I had hatched weeks before. It was finally coming to pass. He knew I had flown in from Toronto. My mother didn’t know. And this night – just before Dec. 25 – my mom opened the front door. I was the last person she expected.

“What are you doing here?” she shrieked.

“It’s a surprise Dad and I’ve been working on for weeks,” I said, as I hugged her for the first time since the summer. “I just wanted to be home for Christmas.” (more…)

Barris Beat

A New York state of mind

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade lasted three hours and featured all manner of superhero, including Spiderman.
Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade lasted three hours and featured all manner of superhero, including Spiderman.

The turkey was done. Done like dinner, because it was American Thanksgiving dinner. The pies and other glorious pastries had come out for dessert. And the relatives I was visiting on Long Island, New York, were well into their annual ritual – eating, drinking, joking and generally over-indulging – during their Nov. 27-to-30 holiday. Except, for them, after the turkey, the dressing and the dessert, there was one other indulgence required.

“OK. Where are the flyers?” my cousin asked. “Gotta check the sales.” (more…)

Barris Beat

One cool life

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
Kay Barris at the Lake Simcoe cottage c. 1960.
Kay Barris at the Lake Simcoe cottage c. 1960.

My sister Kate, my wife Jayne and I sat at her bedside, the same way we have almost daily these past six months. That day, last Thursday, the world was acknowledging the tragic loss of many lives on Sept. 11, 2001. We were marking the loss of one life. My mother – Kay Barris – had died minutes before we arrived about midday. We felt myriad emotions. Sadness. Loss. Some relief that the pain in her weary and withering body had ended. Then, a hospital social worker appeared, passed on condolences, smiled and offered an epitaph of my mother.

“She was one, cool chick,” Brenda Stein said.

(more…)