That New Invention. . . Satin Balls

Does anyone remember the little invention of the satin balls? You don't see them much anymore I guess if you go to E-bay they will have them, but for the most part they are a distant memory for some.

The first ones to come out were made of Styrofoam, covered in millions of little strands of satin. Any color in the book was out there, blue, red, white, green, pink, you named it, it was out there. Later they could be bought made of plastic covered in the same satin.

They were the latest craze to hit the Christmas market since the lit lawn moulds. Who could forget them they would be all shiny and satin and placed on your tree? It was the new invention for Christmas balls instead of the old glass balls.

My Aunt Carolyn bought them and gave them away as Christmas presents one year after she bought beads and had them beaded up like they were some fancy Faberge Christmas ball for the rich. I remember both grandparents running out buying them a set of the latest invention.

I remember the kids talking about this shatter proof balls their parents bought instead of the old stand by glass balls. In fact, every tree you met had shiny satin balls.

Now you know with every good thing there is always a draw back. These beautiful satin ornaments had their share; the biggest problem? Well, let's say you put the ornaments up in a box like you did your other little ornaments. Then the following year you brought them down to put on the tree and wham! Those shatter proof balls weren't snag proof.

That's right; those pretty little balls were now like mice had invaded your pristine box and had a field day with the satin. Nobody knew that when you put them up you were to remove the hooks, who knew. It never failed if one came undone so did the rest.

Now you would think this would have deterred people from going out and buying them another box of these little shiny ornaments; wrong. People thought they were so pretty they couldn't resist. And our fine American stores discovered this and plotted to make more money by just about only offering these satin balls or the expensive glass ornaments, which had fallen out with the public.

I can't say they weren't pretty, they were. But you know a many of ornaments went to the trash to be forgotten. I myself thought the satin balls were pretty but I'm a type of person thinking our old ornaments are just as good and they had a memory to go with them.

Sure these Satin balls made for an interesting tree and were cheaper than glass but for me they just didn't have the luster as the handmade ones or the glass ones that dolled up a tree.

My father had been eyeing these satin balls for a while and one Christmas season he had decided to replace our old ornaments with the new and fancy satin balls. He had joined the Satin ball craze!

Now he didn't want to mix these nice ornaments with the others he already had. In fact he informed mama the others can go into the trash; for which they did.

My kid brother, Jason and I weren't pleased with this new idea of his. We liked our old pink, red and blue glass balls. Sure some were losing their luster, but we've had these balls every since we can remember and tossing them aside wasn't setting well with us.

I have to say when it came to Christmas my father controlled the tree. We hardly got to put an ornament on the tree without it being moved by him. I mean I do that now, but I do it when the kids aren't looking; like when they have gone to bed. By then they have forgotten where they put the ornaments. Not my father he did it in front of you with a few choice words that usually damped our holiday spirit.

It was the Christmas holiday vacation and we kids were out of school. We became bored rather quickly and rather quickly our mother shoved us kids outside.

We had this old barn it was quite nice actually for a barn. It had a wooden floor and the roof didn't leak. Part of it was used for housing chicken and goat feed from the elements. The other part was used as our play house.

Our play house was everything to us it was a house, a school, a department store, grocery store, even a cruise ship at one time. You see we had an imagination and all we needed were a few things to help us along. I remember our play money was cut up newspaper with numbers on it. I remember digging in the trash getting out old cans, cleaning them and using them for our grocery store. Our old school work that we brought home was used for our own little play school.

We used our imagination and this holiday break wasn't going to change that, but we had become bored. As we sat there at our little table and make shift chairs (five gallon metal buckets) we were still bummed about the ornaments that had been tossed into the trash.

Well, that is until we found out Jason had fetched them out of the trash. He had some how managed to hide them from our father. He brought them out so we could stare at them on the table. We wondered what we could do with them. We didn't have a tree nor did we have any bailing wire or string to hang them from the rafters of the barn.

Then I remembered seeing a blood weed, some of you call it a milk weed. It's a pesky weed that when you cut it bleeds out milky stuff. It's also prickly if you let it go and can become a bush. Well, I remember one in the very back of the property had grown quite big and since the cold had sit in the weed had dried up.

I gave Jason the idea to go out and chop it down while I found a bucket of some sort to put dirt in for the tree. We had to have a tree stand so the bucket of dirt would do just fine.

It took him a while but he finally came back with the weed that had a three inch stem which meant Jason had to get the axe because the roots where too deep and he couldn't bend it to break it. The thing was too prickly to pull out of the ground as well. I had the bucket which was nothing more than an old feed can that had accumulated a hole in it and had become useless to feed the chickens with.

We put the weed on the table and with our two other siblings, we decorated our so called tree with the old ornaments.

Jason pointed out we needed garland, something our father didn't throw out. So we took some of those old school papers and colored the backs of them and made them into paper chains.

I wasn't pleased with a naked tree I told him. Meaning it didn't have any presents under it. Once again we dug into the trash and found some small boxes my parents had thrown away. We got some newspaper and wrapped them up, later sneaking a bow or two from the bow box.

For days our mother noted we sure were going outside and playing a lot in the barn. She never went to the barn so she just assumed it was just us playing around.

We knew we could get into trouble for digging in the trash we did before, so we weren't going to chance it this time, by telling mama what we had done. However where there is a good plan there is always a flaw; especially when children are involved.

You see, we forgot that our father would be checking the barn at some point to make sure the chickens and goats had enough feed. We never thought about that.

So you can imagine what four children did when that darn barn door opened and there stood our father. We came off our buckets as they say and stood beside each other. One moment we are admiring our handy work the next we know our father is going to tear it down and whip us.

Jason and I dreaded this moment. Once he stepped into the barn we knew we were dead. First we would get a whipping for digging in the trash, another for using the axe to cut the weed down, another for using tape to wrap empty boxes, another for stealing bows, wasting glue, our list of whippings was longer than our Christmas list. If only we had thought about him checking on the feed.

We were ready for the yelling and the whipping that we would receive, however my father must have been hit in the head that day.

To our surprise, yes, he cursed, even in the good mood that man cursed. But to our surprise, he thought it was cute. We haven't figured out if we just caught him in a good mood or if he really thought what we did was adorable as my mother quoted.

Of course we explained we like the old glass ones as well as the new ones he bought, but there were still some good glass balls and felt he shouldn't have thrown them away.

One thing was for sure, the following year and some years after that some of our glass balls would be perched with the satin balls or plastic balls or handmade items. Just because it's old doesn't mean it needs to go to the trash.



Books by Carla Landreth
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