THROUGH
MOUNTAIN MISTS
Early Settlers of
John Their
Descendants...Their Stories...Their Achievements
Lifting the
Mists of History on Their Way of Life
By: Ethelene Dyer Jones
For all of you who have become
faithful
readers since July 31, 2003 when “Through Mountain Mists” first
appeared in
this paper, Happy Christmas. Go with me
on a personal journey to Christmases Past.
May this odyssey through the mists to a simpler time bring to
your mind
remembrances of good Christmases of decades ago.
When I was a child I did not
give much
thought to what went into Christmas except for my want list and a
special time
of year that seemed a long time in coming.
In retrospect, I can understand how hard it must have been for
my
parents and other kin to provide a good holiday season from the want
and penury
often experienced during the days of the Great Depression and World War
II.
Christmas celebrations hinged
around the
local school and church. I went to a
two-teacher country school, Choestoe, and there in the “little room”
(primer
through third grades) and the “big room” (fourth through seventh
grades),
preparations were made by our diligent teachers to make our school
Christmas
program a special time. I went to the
“new”
Choestoe School, a building erected in 1936 just in time for me to
begin first
grade there. It had the unusual feature
of a removable partition between the two classrooms, and for special
occasions
like the Christmas play (or the commencement program at the end of the
school
year), the partitions were taken down and one large room was formed
with a
movable stage set against the windows on the north side of the building. There, after days of rehearsing, we performed
our Christmas recitations and pageant to a packed house of parents who
came to
proudly own their children who were in the limelight.
I
remember some of those teachers who worked with us: Mrs. Mert Shuler,
Miss Mary
Dyer, and my own sister, Mrs. Louise Dyer, with the primary groups;
Miss Opal
Sullivan, Mrs. Florence Hunter, and Mrs. Bonnie Snow with upper grades.
There
were others, of course, but these were teachers for various years I was
a
student at Choestoe School. We “drew”
names and got an inexpensive gift for the person whose name we drew. My gift usually came from my Grandpa Bud
Collins’s country store, or else my dad, J. Marion Dyer, would make a
trip to
Blairsville to “buy Christmas.”
The larger boys had been to
somebody’s
woods and cut a pine tree, and part of the preparation was making
colored paper
chains to decorate the tree and stringing popcorn the teacher had
brought from
home. There were no lights to illuminate
the tree, because Choestoe School did not then have electricity. How the teachers managed to get small gifts
for
each of their children on the meager salary they drew is a mystery to
me. I remember pencils with our name
imprinted, a
pencil box, and small paper bags with candy and an orange or apple. We went home from the school Christmas
program feeling good from our performance, the accolades it brought,
and our
little gifts.
The church Christmas program was
not much
different from that at school except that our pageant was always a
reenactment
of the Christmas Story from Luke and Matthew.
How all the girls longed to be Mary or angels.
If not selected for these parts, we were in
the choir to sing Christmas carols or had a special poem to learn and
recite. To forget lines, either at school
or at church, was an anxious fear. If it
happened, we were embarrassed. At church
as well as at school, we drew names for giving gifts, and we could
expect a bag
of goodies from our Sunday School teachers at church.
I cannot remember Santa Claus
ever
appearing at any of my childhood school and church programs. Maybe some areas had this jolly old Saint
Nick, but we did not at Choestoe.
Perhaps it was too hard to come by a red suit back then.
At home, our Christmas
celebrations were
simple. We children could expect one
gift from Santa and some candy and fruits in our stockings “hung by the
chimney
with care.” At Christmas oranges were a
once-a-year treat. Dad also purchased
boxes of stick candy--peppermint, licorice, and horehound.
We sometimes had the rare treat of “cocolate
drops” or Hershey’s kisses.
I can remember the Christmas
when my little
brother Bluford got a “Radio Flyer” wagon as his major gift. Earlier, when I was five, I got a beautiful
Christmas holiday meals were
interchanged
between Grandpa Collins’ home and Grandma Dyer’s home, always with a
large
crowd of family at both places. Maybe my
mother took food, too. I don’t
remember. These were solid meals but not
necessarily fancy. We grew turkeys for
market, and at Christmas one was prepared for the meal.
Wonderful country-cured ham was also a part
of the meal as were the dried fruits and preserved vegetables from our
bountiful harvest.
We had candy-pullings as
community holiday
parties. My older sister Louise and my
older brother Eugene sometimes hosted these events with other young
people from
the community invited. The sorghum syrup,
with baking soda added, was boiled to a certain consistency noted by
letting a
drop fall into a cup of cold water. Then
the candy was beaten for awhile until it was cool enough to take in
hand and
pull and pull. The sorghum candy was
twisted into sticks, and later cut. It
was a tasty treat. Especially delightful
were the popcorn balls made with the sorghum syrup cooked to candy
consistency
to hold the popped corn together.
Roasted chestnuts, chinquapins, and peanuts added to the
refreshments at
Christmas socials in the community, and sugar cookies and gingerbread
men were
also enjoyed.
In that simple time we didn’t
notice that
we could not afford all the goodies displayed in the Sears-Roebuck
catalog. To have one special gift and
really appreciate it was treasure enough and to be surrounded by the
love of
family and friends was a true Christmas treat.
Updated September
1,
2009
Back To Union County, Georgia GenWeb Site