I grew up in the mountains of North Carolina, near Asheville. When I was young, it sometimes snowed at Christmas. I loved to watch snow falling and to go out and play with my cousins. Once Billy and Nancy and Frank and I attempted to make an igloo.
So many of my wonderful Christmases were just alike that it’s hard to single out a special one.
Of course, I always got a doll. That was necessary because the one from last year was always missing a limb or an eye (the kind that fell backward out of the eye socket into the head of the doll). Also, if I had left her out in the rain, the paint of her face washed off. By the next Christmas, that doll was an eyesore, so Santa Claus brought me a new one.
For years, after breakfast, I proudly marched out the road to visit the relatives. I showed off my new doll and admired the gifts Santa had left my cousins. If I hung around the kitchen doors, my aunts gave me cookies or candy; it didn’t even require a hint.
A special Christmas does come to mind. One year, my aunt Gladys gave me a Brownie camera. What a treat! I wanted to go out immediately and take pictures even though it was snowing heavily. My mother bundled me up in my coat with matching leggings and cap and boots. I slung the little black strap around my neck and out I went to take pictures. The little black box was easy to focus, with its two-inch square aperture under the flip-top. Since there was no such thing as a flash attachment at that time, all my photography took place outdoors.
It’s strange how the white world of a snow-filled sky seems to take color out of regular objects. I walked in whiteness, sometimes sticking my tongue out to capture snowflakes, hardly feeling the cold.
Some of the neighbors had hedges of evergreens or boxwood, and that special Christmas day, snow piled inches high on the limbs and weighed them down. I was ecstatic with the beauty of it all, and took up a whole roll of film.
That Brownie camera was one of the best gifts ever and one I remember fondly to this day.
