This year we celebrated the first anniversary of our 50th Coker Tire Christmas party (that’s 51 for the math challenged!).   Now I can’t say that I’ve been at every single one of those parties, heck, I’m only errr uh….29….ok… 31!  Actually I was away at college some too so I did miss a couple.    Back about many, many years ago my parents, Harold & Lill Coker, would have the employee’s and their families over to our house for a Christmas dinner.  My mom would read the children the story of Jesus’ birth explaining the true meaning of Christmas.

We would all have good ole home-made food that my Momma cooked.  Granted, back then when my Dad started with just him and a helper and maybe another guy or two it might have been a total of 12 people including children, but I remember it as great fun with all of us gathered in our farm house to celebrate Christmas together. Since those early company Christmas parties in the living room days, our numbers have certainly grown larger, and the most important part is there were more kids!  Our Christmas party got bigger so we moved it into the barn at Coker Farm which would have tires, horses, cows and of course at one time or another it also had tires in it of course!  This was our third Christmas in our headquarters complex Car Museum and we all feel just as blessed as ever, especially me.

Check out the picture of all the kids with jolly old St Nick! (Here’s also a link to all the other pictures)  I think ole Santa even had a great time with all of our kids!    We might not now always have story time read by my mom, but there is always a prayer before we have our Christmas dinner thanking the Lord for all of our blessings, especially sending His Son which I know to be the real reason for the season!

We thought we were going to have a big dilemma this year!   You see since Santa ALWAYS shows up for our Christmas party, we knew we had a problem because the roll up garage door had been temporarily replaced with a double walk in door which was fabricated by the Honest Charley Garage guys so we can put it in and remove it.   This limited the width of the Santa delivery vehicle to the width of two regular 36 inch doors.   Santa figured it out though and arrived in full form riding in one of my collector bikes in the sidecar!    The motorcycle and sidecar fit through the double doors perfectly and Santa even squeezed into the sidecar easily.   He told me that if he could squeeze down all those skinny chimney’s all those Yankees have up North, he could fit in that sidecar!

I know I am posting this after Christmas, so sorry for being late with it.   Just know that we celebrate it right.  It’s about giving…not receiving, and the kids, and eatin big, and don’t forget the real reason for the season!