Nearly fifty years ago I wrote a Christmas story for my column Antiquer’s Notebook, which appeared every Friday in the Morristown, New Jersey newspaper The Daily Record. Last night I started thinking about where that column was. I’d kept copies of all my old columns, but for some reason this one had disappeared. If only I could find it again….
But the boxes full of my old clippings were packed away in a cold crawl space that was difficult to get to. If I’d published these articles when there was an internet, finding it would be a simple matter. However, back in 1977, when I wrote this story, the internet was still being developed. So there was no way to retrieve it electronically. Or was there?
This morning, over coffee, I started searching on my iPhone. As soon as I put in “Daily Record Morristown NJ Archives,” the site Newspapers.com came up, announcing that any article article from 1974 on could be located. What?! Maybe I could find it after all!
After clicking on the website and logging in for a free 14-day trial, I entered into the search bars “The Daily Record,” “Antiquer’s Notebook,” and the dates “1977-78.” Voila! Over 100 notifications came up – they did, indeed, have copies of all my columns! Now I just had to figure out which one it was.
After sharing this excitement with Buzz, I went to my computer and began experimenting on the Newspapers.com site, finally realizing that I could narrow my search by putting in “Friday” and “December 1977.” But maybe it was 1978, I couldn’t remember. Going through Fridays in 1977, I suddenly came upon it: December 23, 1977. Hallelujah! – there it was!
“I found it!” I cried out to Buzz.
“Great!” he said, coming over to stand behind me, looking at the image I’d found. “Read it to me.” And so I began:
“It was our only Christmas at the farm. Earlysville, Virginia, December 1975.
The oldest part of the house, built in the late 1700s, had been a log cabin, one large room with a stone fireplace, sleeping loft and lean-to kitchen. Later more rooms were added, two additional fireplaces, a porch and stairways to the upper floor. The house had settled over the years, causing doorways, mantels, and window frames to tilt every which way; stoops were worn with decades of use, the once exposed log beams had been covered with beaded wooden panelling.
We filled it with the country antiques we’d collected – grained chests and red painted cupboards, pierced tin pie safes, ladder back rockers, starburst quilts and hog scraper candlesticks. When early morning sun poured into the keeping room windows, we always had the feeling, somehow, that the old house approved.
From the kitchen windows we had a view of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which loomed in a distant purplish haze even on the clearest of days. Our back yard was fenced in to keep out the farmer’s cows, and beyond were fields of palest gold meadow grass, a lake that glittered in the winter light, woodland sedged with pines.
Snow fell before Christmas in soft, drifting flakes so large you could see, if you tried, each delicate intricate pattern. There was a green-gathering party that day at the Tevendales, our nearest neighbors, and we’d all bundled up warmly, excited about the prospect of a festive day’s outing and the unexpected gift of white.
With the others we climbed aboard field wagons and, tractor-drawn, headed toward the woods. There we pulled long tendrils of running cedar from beneath the snow, cut down branches of spruce and pine, and then circled back toward our place, where 30-foot holly trees supplied enough bright red berries and shiny green leaves to festoon every house in the countryside.
Next day, we three struck out across the meadow, toward the woods again, for our tree. We found it nestled into a hillside, a perfectly shaped fir, just the right size for our low-ceilinged keeping room.
It made a path in the snow as we dragged it exuberantly toward the house, past the lake and the old stone-walled cemetery on the hillside, where small gray markers gave witness to inhabitants of other years, the Austin family, who had homesteaded here in the 1800s.
Once inside it was only fitting that the tree be decorated as of old with strings of cranberries and popcorn, paper cutouts of stars and sleighs, peppermint sticks and cookies cut from handmade tin shapes. Cats and reindeer, roosters and running horses.
With a pine wreath above the mantel, holly and running cedar strewn about the doorways, and our tree – lit with tiny lights instead of candles, our only modern concession – we had only the presents to wrap and we were ready.
Our cats sniffed the tree curiously. Cautiously we wired it to the wall in several strategic places, averting possible catastrophe.
On Christmas Eve, with a roast in the oven and the sun glowing pink-gold over the mountains, we set out for a walk to watch the last fading colors of the sky. The air had a gray chill, promising more snow that evening, and the meadow grass crunched underfoot as we held hands and began singing, loudly, every Christmas carol we could remember the words to.
The cows, startled, began coming up out of the creek bed. Edging nearer, sniffing the air and pawing at the frozen ground, they soon formed a ring around us as we continued to sing. “Oh come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant, oh come ye, oh come ye….”
Their great dark eyes seemed to grow even wider as they watched us, crooking their ears and swishing their tails furiously. Our favorite brown and white cow, the only one brave enough to let us pet him, stepped forward and nuzzled his nose, tentatively, toward Keri’s pocket. Suddenly we realized they were more hungry than curious. The farmer who rented these fields hadn’t been by for a day or two, we remembered. What they needed on this Christmas Eve, besides a chorus of carols, was simply a little sustenance.
Back at the house we gathered every piece of day-old bread we could find, stuffing our pockets full and basketing an array of crusts in our up-turned coat flaps. Heading back into the fields again, where the cows waited patiently under a sky patterned with stars, we attempted to feed at least one morsel to every beast. When all we had was gone, we started back toward the house, the cows following us as far as the gate and then standing, lowing, as we closed and latched it behind us.
Hours later, after our roast beef dinner, after a warming fire and the Christmas story and a round of hand-dipped chocolates, the lights suddenly dimmed for a moment, rose up again, and went to black – Christmas tree and all. Wind moaned around the eves and a rattling noise began on the tin roof.
Taking up candles we peered out the windows at the hard sleet pelting against the glass. We tried our phone – dead, of course, for this was the country and even a simple summer storm could halt the lines.
But we had candles and the warmth from our fireplace, and plenty of food in the larder.
We lit a few oil lamps and started singing again.”
I could barely get out the last line – the emotion of returning to a time fifty years ago was too overwhelming. Buzz and I just looked at each other. “That was a beautiful Christmas,” he said finally. All I could do was nod.
