Making everyone happier

Wanda and Don Kluttz are going to be elbow-deep in orange crunch tonight.

But not alone.

Their daughter, Dakeita, and her husband, Russ Roakes, will be there breaking nuts for pineapple delight.

When you’re expecting 25 to 50 people for dinner and you’re filling the biggest disposable turkey roasters you could find with mouth-watering desserts for folks coming to the 20th annual Nobody Should Be Alone at Christmas party Saturday night, there’s plenty to do.

Oranges to grate, pudding to make, graham crackers to crush even if Wanda’s already made the hash brown casserole and has their garden beans ready to go because they’re always everybody’s favorite. Even if Marilyn Olvey has made Don the most outlandish outfit he’s had yet.

He’s going to be decked out in a multi-colored polka dot vest and diamond studded knickers and a blinding yaller shirt and kooky hat so everybody can spot him.

So they’ll laugh, not cry.

So they’ll enjoy themselves, not grieve.

So Kat Trexler, who lost her husband in a car accident last fall, won’t be thinking about going to Christmas doings at church without him. So Elva Kesler, who’s been coming since the first party in 1981, will have the best time she’s ever had.

The parties started 20 years ago because Wanda and Don had just moved into their new home and realized several of their new neighbors had just lost a husband or a wife. They were going to be alone for Christmas.

“We felt sorry for them,” Wanda says. “That first year, we invited 11 folks. Some men had died, and we thought ‘Those women are going to be alone. Let’s invite them in.’

“Elva Kesler was one of them. She’d lost Howell. And Luther McCombs. His wife, Lizzie, had died.”

They didn’t ask any couples. Couples share Christmas with each other, but those who have been half a couple and now ...

“That first time was just wonderful. We gathered around our dining room table with all of them. I had made chicken pies, and we played bingo. Now we always play bingo and exchange gifts.

Well, not exactly exchange gifts. It’s more like ...

First, everybody draws a number, and then, in numerical order, gets a gift. But then? Oh, my! If No. 2 prefers No. 1’s gift to making a selection of her own, she can take it, and No. 1 selects another gift. Ditto No. 3. And No. 4. And so on.

At one party, Maw Pickler got a box of red tissues and Ella Kesler took them. Maw picked again, but when Sadie Roseman got crocheted shoes — ooooh, bedlam broke out. First one, then another took them, and one woman put them on and announced: “I’ve got athlete’s foot.”

Nobody believed her, and somebody took the shoes.

This year Wanda’s dad, George Poole, is going to make music on an old tin tub and spoons and washboard, and everybody will laugh.

And John Bost, who’s 92, might bring another pocketbook. One year he brought a pocketbook for the gift exchange that everybody, Wanda says, wanted. “We almost wore it out.” His pocketbook is always full of laughter.

And the party will be full of Christmas for Wanda and Don and all their guests, who won’t start the holiday season alone.

Contact Rose Post at 704-797-4251 or rpost@salisburypost.com .