Christmas Came early to Clemson University this year. The August heat may have risen as the midday summer sun beat down, but Charlie Christmas was on his way to campus with his wife, to visit his grandson. A Class of 1960 alumni, Christmas’s namesake, Charlie Prunkl, is a sophomore at Clemson. The next twenty four hours would be an early Christmas gift of his grandson.

At the Abernathy Hotel across the street from campus, our family was encouraged to see that Christmas’s speech had slowly improved from the temporary speech loss from having had a stroke three months. The lobby of the Abernathy sports Clemson decor which includes every year book in the University’s history. Prunkl waited in the hotel lobby having already pulled yearbooks from 1956-1960 off the shelves in search of his grandfather’s photos. Christmas’s eyes twinkle as he and Prunkl turn the pages of the yearbooks, locating Christmas among the almost all-male student body photos. They turn to pages covered with men in suits dancing with girls in flowing dresses with cinched waistlines. Christmas, slowly stuttering said, “at Clemson we had dance weekends and everybody would bring a date from surrounding colleges to stay in an approved chaperoned house for the girls.” There were several guys that lived in an off campus house called, the Adobe, with Christmas one being George Tupper. The other roommate was Eric Phillpott who dated Diane Schenck who attended Converse College. Diane would visit Clemson most weekends. Christmas would arrange with Diane before she left on Sundays for her to set him up with a date for the Big Band Dance weekends. With pay phones down the hall, Christmas would arrange to call Diane at a designate time on the following Wednesday. Placing the dime in the pay phone, dialing zero, the operator would answer saying “may I help you?” Christmas would reply, “I’d like to make a collect call to.…” He would give the phone number for Diane Schenck’s hall phone. The operator would place the call. Since it was the time they had arranged for Christmas to call, Diane would be waiting by the phone. She would answer. The operator would say, “ I have a collect call for Diane Schenck” and Diane would say, “she is not here but …..will be back soon.” Whatever name Diane gave the operator would be the name of Christmas’s date the upcoming weekend. Christmas would hang up and the dime would be returned because technically no one accepted the call.

The next morning Prunkl picked us up for a driving tour of campus. Leaving the hotel, we passed The Esso Club on the left. “Aw; the Esso Club, now that is a landmark”, Christmas said, “I’ve never been there as I couldn’t afford it at the time.” If we weren’t in a hurry, we would have made a quick stop in, as this-the first visit ever with his grandson-would be only one of a handful of visits Christmas had made back to campus in his lifetime. Turning right onto Walter T Cox Blvd, for a moment, the visions we had seen in the yearbook the night before of a mostly

all-male student body at Clemson in the 60’s came to life as Christmas’s memories poured forth. As we passed Bowman Field , he described the early morning formations and drills held there during his years on campus. Turning right onto Calhoun Drive, Tillman Hall stood proud and tall on the hill with the morning sun lighting up the three-story brick facade that holds the bell tower.

There is something in these hills because incredibly, Christmas’s words magically began to flow forth as his memories were ignited by these familiar sites. Parking in the horseshoe, the two Charlies walked to the bell tower for the traditional photo op. After posing for a few photos in their Clemson garb, they both turned their backs away from the camera and stared up at the bell tower. Unable to hear what Christmas was saying, I watched as Prunkl threw back his head and began to laugh. Apparently, Christmas told Prunkl of the time a cow from the dairy farm on campus was led to the top of the bell tower in the middle of the night as a prank. The next day when the cow was discovered, the painful realization that cows can go up stairs but not downstairs led to it being slaughtered in order to remove it from the tower. Being a prankster himself, Prunkl appreciated any story that involved something unique on a rooftop. As we passed the Hendrix Student Center, Christmas pointed to where the dairy cows were located on campus back in the early days. Being an agriculture college, the farm on campus providing the best source of Clemson’s famous ice cream. Christmas said, “In order to be able to afford college in the 1950’s, I worked all summer at the Pet Milk Company making 75 cents an hour delivering ice cream earning him the name Charlie Chan the Ice Cream Man. When there were damaged containers of ice cream, the dairy would tell me to throw them away but instead I would take them to all my buddies.”

Christmas came from a hard-working family; his father owned a feed business called Christmas Feed in Morristown, Tennessee. Working for this family business in high school, Christmas had saved for a Ford Model A complete with curtains in the back on the windows. The story goes his dad wouldn’t allowed him to drive the car once he bought it because he didn’t have the $90 for the insurance. The new car sat in the driveway for two months while he worked to pay for the insurance. Christmas sold the Model A to help pay for college. Traveling back and forth to Clemson, Christmas joined the other students who hitchhiked to and from their home towns. There was a designated place across from campus where boys would stand to catch a ride. They would dress in a suit carrying a duffle with a Clemson sticker on it so drivers would know they were college students hitchhiking. They would go to the bumming line located in front of the library to wait for a ride. A person would pull up, ask where they were going, then tell the student how far they could take them. Christmas told of traveling across the mountains to home piecing together multiple rides.

Parking the van, Prunkl and Christmas walked off toward Fort Hill to try and locate Christmas’s name in the sidewalk. But when they returned, they said, years of students walking to and from class and football games had worn down the etching in the sidewalk, so his name could not be located.

We ended the tour with a trip to the Outdoor Center. Having settled in Mobile, Alabama after Clemson, one of Christmas’s favorite past times was sailing on a Sunfish with his children on Mobile Bay. Grandfather and grandson share a love for the water. Both Charlies began reminiscing about rafting down a river in Jackson Hole years ago. At the time, Prunkl was 10 years old and Christmas was the ripe young age of 73. They laughed about Christmas falling out of the raft during that trip. Prunkl had just completed a summer in Wisconsin living in his mini van, aptly named The Mothership. He spent eighty one days working as a white water raft guide on the Menomie River. Christmas was in awe of Lake Hartwell, perhaps having never seen it from this vantage point. “That lake was man-made while I was at Clemson. It was a river but they closed up the end.”

He recalled the many sleepless mornings during his Clemson days when the dredging was being done to build the lake.

Back at the Abernathy, Prunkl set off for an afternoon class while Christmas packed to head home. An 83-year-old man with the last name Christmas had just given his grandson one of the greatest gifts; a trip down memory lane about a place they both call home, Clemson.