When I was a kid, after we opened gifts on Dec. 25, we’d pile into the paneled station wagon, and then later the Buick or the Delta 88, and we’d head south from Buffalo to Jamestown to visit family, the car full of gifts and three mittened kids, and usually a dog stuck somewhere in between the mayhem.

It was the most American of scenes, this family heading to their hometown in time for roasted turkey at their grandma’s house, back in the days when snowbanks were 6 feet tall by the holidays. Snow was just part of life then and I don’t remember anyone entertaining the idea of canceling our trip because of blowing snow.

We were much sturdier back then.

My mother would sit in the front seat on these trips with the heat blasting, waiting for Elvis’ “Merry Christmas Baby” to come on the car radio and we’d drive down the roads of Fredonia and Gerry, through these winter wonderlands, the houses we passed so silent and almost sacred on that day, Christmas trees lit in the window, the soft glow of light peeking through frosted panes, and we could imagine the smell of pie baking if we walked in someone’s door, and the tinkling of fine stemware.

But none of this is worth knowing if you don’t understand what we were pulling up to on Winsor Street, in a house a few doors from where my grandmother’s street intersected with Lakeview, in a fine craftsman with a wide front porch and a giant picture window that showed the scene inside — a scene of warmth and cheer and all the things a house should be on Christmas.

My grandmother prepared for our arrival weeks ahead of time, having a tree delivered right to her door by the same tree seller from the same lot every year.

The tree had to be just right or she’d send the young man back to get another one. And then another one. And then she’d spend a whole week laying the tinsel on the tree just right—perfectly hung with no wrinkled strands caught up in the branches in a tizzy.

When we pulled up—almost sleigh-like in her driveway, the faces of my four blonde and bespectacled cousins would appear in the picture window out of nowhere and with wide grins they’d watch us, withstanding the blast of cold when their father opened the door with worn gloves to help carry in the cookies and the boxes and the suitcases from our car.

We scurried through the winters in those days—those frigid and snowy winters of the 60’s and 70’s, but we scurried even quicker on Christmas, my grandmother meeting us at the door in an apron, ready to offer bottles of Pepsi and Russell Stover’s chocolates, a heap of presents from Bigelows and the Sears and Roebuck catalog piled in small mountains and beautifully wrapped under her perfect tree.

At dinner, which my cousin Sandy and I mostly giggled through, we passed pickles and olives in a glass serving tray, rich gravy in a porcelain blue server, and heaps of turkey with its perfectly browned skin set on a white platter.

It was her kitchen that made her house her house—an old radio on the counter cackling the weather report and then tinty renditions of Jingle Bells. The same ice box full of interesting things remained year after year in the corner and she had these little juice glasses my entire life with little pictures of orange slices on them.

Nothing ever changed there.

Nothing ever broke.

Yesterday, I went to an appliance to look around and in the corner of the store, the salesman pointed out a real 1950’s General Electric refrigerator which was plugged in and still in fine working order.

As I stood there and marveled at the sturdiness of a thing that so belongs to yesterday, I was also brought back to Christmas on Winsor Street—in an instant—all the smells and the tastes and the visual imagery of another time.

And I felt myself long for it—to pull up in that hilly little driveway and hunt for the smiles of my cousins and for the giant snow mounds I’d cross on my way to the door.

And so on my way home yesterday, I drove down Winsor Street and parked outside the old house so I could meet the memory of my grandmother at the door.