Holiday Treasure Hunt

The lasting impact of a family tradition.

👋 Hello, I’m Kevin Ferguson and welcome to 🍷 Rain on the Monte Bello Ridge,🍷 a memoir about health, aging and winemaking. (Book summary) 🍇 This is my newsletter. It includes book research and early release chapters about winemaker Mario Gemello and his centenarian widow, Kay Gemello. 📖 They are my lovable maternal grandparents. You can subscribe by clicking on this handy little button.

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Holiday Treasure Hunt

Grandpa Mario was the ultimate handyman. In his early newlywed days, he’d work double shifts. Winemaking by day. Construction by night.

His parents offered to give up their 3-bedroom house on the Gemello ranch, if Mario would build a second smaller house on the property for them to move into. This was the not-so-subtle way of saying we’re hoping for grandchildren and don’t want to go far to see them.

This was in 1941. Mario would come in from working in the winery all day, eat something to refuel, then go back out hammering away. Like an amateur accountant, he tracked his building expenses - $4,000 in all - in a small blue notebook.

Those do-it-yourself skills would come in handy three decades and three children later. Pat, my mom, would come first. John three years later. Mark seven years after John. In 1970, Mario and Grandma Kay would launch a Christmas tradition: a treasure hunt of sorts for his young adult children. A hundred dollar bill hidden inside a homemade gift, often built in Mario’s toolshed of a garage. 

“This was a project my mom and dad love to do together,” Pat said. “My mom has told me many times that around November, they’d sit at the kitchen table and draw up ideas.”

On Christmas Day, Pat, John and Mark would assemble on my grandparents’ couch, unwrap a foot-high wooden reindeer, and they’d say, “That’s cute. Thanks.”

Mario would say: “If you were hoping for something more, not to worry. There might be something hidden somewhere on or inside your little Rudolph.” 

Within a few minutes of tinkering, one of the siblings would notice the red nose was loose. Popping it off would reveal a rolled up hundred dollar bill stuffed inside.

My grandparents tried not to be too predictable. So occasionally, the unwrapping would reveal a gift not built from Mario’s toolshed. Like the year the trio wound up staring at clear cylinders of shredded money. The hundred dollar bills would be found buried within the pieces of confetti.

Another year, Mario claimed he was out of creative ideas and decided not to do the hidden money gag. 

An air of disappointment swept across the living room, at least among one generation. Meanwhile, my brother, cousins and I happily unwrapped our gifts.

At one point, Uncle John sneezed, prompting Mario to grab a box of Kleenex. “Here, take a tissue.”

“I have a handkerchief,” John said.

“Go on, grab a Kleenex anyway,” Mario insisted. 

John pulled a tissue and a dollar bill slipped out from under the tissue and fluttered to the ground.

“Where did that come from?” Mario asked with joy. “Wonder if there’s more.”

The yank of each tissue produced another dollar bill. And you guessed it: a hundred in each of the three boxes.

“Boy, you sure had a lot of time on your hands this year, Gramps!” I told him.

Despite the tediousness of slipping a dollar between three hundred tissues, it’s hard to put a price on the joy he got in tricking his kids the tradition may be over.

Other years, some of these money gags, that would often turn into future holiday decorations, included a wooden snowman, a hot-plate made of Gemello wine corks and a tennis ball with a bill inserted into a tiny hole, then covered by the ball’s fir.

The lack of creative consistency had my mom and two uncles on the lookout for any clues well before the game would commence, usually after the grandchildren opened their gifts.

One year in the mid 1980’s, Uncle Mark thought he spotted a clue early Christmas Day. His daughter, Lisa, a darling little four-year-old, had just unwrapped a small foldable chalkboard. It was held together with three screws.

Mark said, “Pat, John. Look: three screws. You think?”

“Get a screwdriver,” John instructed his younger brother.

Grandpa Mario returned from another room to see Mark gripping the chalkboard on its side, about to loosen the first screw.

“What are you doing? That’s not it you numbskull!” Mario exclaimed.

That year, Mario and Grandma Kay (this had to be her idea) repeated an earlier concept, a wooden reindeer, but this time a baby one with a twist: its trunk was a potpourri-filled square box. Hardly difficult to guess where the cash was stashed.

If you are the one in your family feeling pooped at the end of a day of putting up holiday decorations, and wonder if all the hard work is worth it, consider this: it’s likely that a random ornament or a certain decoration triggers a special memory for each of your family members, even if they don’t express it as frequently as they should.

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