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 six feet tall by the holidays.  Snow was just part of life then and I don’t remember anyone cancelling that yearly trip even in the grips of blustery weather.

Lord, we were much sturdier back then.

My mother would sit in the front seat on the 90-mile drive 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 those winter wonderlands, the houses we passed so sweet and solemn on that day, Christmas trees alight in the windows, a soft glow streaming through the frosted panes, and as we drove by, we could imagine the smell of pie baking inside 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 Windsor Street, in a house that sat a few doors from Lakeview Avenue — a fine craftsman with a wide front porch and a giant picture window that revealed 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, bearing the blast of cold that swept the living room when their father opened the door with worn gloves to help carry in the cookies and the shopping bags 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 up to my grandmother’s door, where she met us 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 tall and twinkling 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 in the corner year after year, along with the little juice glasses with pictures of orange slices on the side that were lined up in an old cupboard.

Nothing ever changed in that house beyond her shade of lipstick.

Yesterday, I went to Acme Appliances 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 marveling at a thing still humming after decades, I was 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 longing for it — longing to pull up to that hilly little driveway and hunt for the smiles of my cousins in the window and for the giant snow mounds I used to plow through 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 grandma at the door.