Get The Ink Out:

The holidays are over. I don’t know about you, but I’m grateful. I’m grateful that the stress is gone and that my family is out of my hair.

But most of all I’m grateful that I even got to spend the holidays with my family.

As a journalist, it’s hard to have a “normal” life because the news never sleeps.

My family has gotten used to moving Christmas to different parts of December to accommodate my schedule, if I can even make it back to Bishop, which yes, does have that famous bakery with the best bread ever halfway between here and Tahoe.

By the way, it’s Erik Schat’s Baakerÿ, 763 N. Main St., Bishop, Calif. I highly recommend getting the turkey sandwich, but get there before noon or you’ll wait in line forever.

Anyway, this year was especially joyful because I spent Christmas weekend with not only my brother, sister and parents, but also with my aunt, uncle, cousin and maternal grandparents.

Grandma and Grandpa Phelps are here from Overbrook, Kan., with their cat, Maggie, and two dogs, Oliver and Teddy, until April 1.

Having them around is great because I have the chance to eat all kinds of amazing Midwestern fare.

In Dec. 28’s paper we wrote about the traditions of the MacGowan-Woods-Kugle family of Newport Beach. The family exchanges poems and gag gifts every year (“Rhymes with reason”).

This made me think of my own family’s traditions and to be honest, all I could think of were all the family stories we repeat every year.

When we gather around for dinner, and Dad starts another one of his “Remember that time...” bits, I eagerly anticipate the end when we’ll all let out a loud guffaw.

This oral history, as it were, is important to us. And I’m sure your family’s stories are important to many of you, as well. It’s how we remain connected through the generations.

Here are a few of my family’s stories so you can hopefully have a few laughs as you recover from day-after-Christmas shopping, a New-Year’s-Eve hangover, saying good bye to Uncle John, who drank your best bottle of scotch, or whatever stress the holidays brought.

The Worst Injury

When my father, Fred, was a lad he walked behind another boy just as he swung a baseball bat. Poor Dad took it full in the face.

As any little boy would, he immediately started crying and ran home to his mother.

He tried telling his mom what happened, but all he could do was cry as he spat out his teeth. Of course, his mom panicked and didn’t know what her poor son was going to do without his teeth.

But finally, little Freddy calmed down enough to tell her all those “teeth” were just pieces of the peanut brittle he’d been eating when he got hit in the face.

This story is especially funny because to this day peanut brittle is Dad’s favorite candy, and he gets the biggest box of it from See’s every year.

No Fashion Sense

When I was about 3, I loudly proclaimed to my mother while in the grocery store, “Look, Mom, that man has a haircut with a hole in it!”

The poor man was bald, and of course I had to point it out for everyone to see.

The Creature From A Can

This one is best told by Grandma Phelps:

“We were at Grandma Craig’s and no one was paying attention to Cindy [my mom]. She was sitting under the table and then suddenly she says, ‘Lookie!’ She had put black olives on all of her fingers! Grandpa Craig wasn’t too happy about it.”

My mom later explained that olives were just so weird-looking and it was fun to wear them on her fingers because it was like some sort of creature.

Sound It Out

Mom tells this one about my sister learning to read the best:

“Kelli and I were grocery shopping in the deli section, where the lunch meats and cheeses are in the cold cases.

“I walked a little ahead of her and was looking at cheeses and she comes running over and says, ‘Mom, Mom, come here.’ So I had to backtrack and go five feet back and she’s pointing up at one of those spindles.

“She says, ‘Look, look.’ She just looks at me and looks at the package and points at it with her little finger and says, ‘That’s snake food!’ The package read ‘snack food.’”

A Small Friend

When I was little, I used to love playing in the garden while my mom planted her flowers.

She used to admonish me, “Don’t go out into the street,” because it was busy and so she would check on me every few minutes.

She would turn around and ask me what I was doing and the answer was always, “Nothing.”

“I got busy, I guess, and I hear you crying and saying, ‘Oh my God, he won’t move,’” Mom said.

She turned around and I’m holding a dead mouse.

Mom screamed and said, “Put that down!”

“All I could think of were the diseases in that mouse,” Mom said. “You just kept saying, ‘But he won’t move.’ You were so somber.

“I had to wash your hands up to your ears,” Mom said. “[The mouse] fit in the palm of your hand. I have no idea where it ended up, but it went flying out of your hand. Thank goodness you didn’t put it in your mouth.”

This is just a small sample of the family lore we have. Every Christmas I await those stories because I always laugh so hard I cry and sometimes it just feels good to let it all out, darn it.

I’m always looking for column suggestions. I especially want to hear what the community has going on. So e-mail me with your ideas.