Your
Aunt Bertha and Uncle June will be with us, and Mr. and Mrs. Boehm have
promised faithfully to come. We have some left over candy boxes that we’re
going to fill with sugared popcorn, “old hard Christmas candy,” and the Orofino
Mercantile’s best assorted nuts. I had some chickens and eggs to trade at the
Merc, so I got supplies and some treats, and Lydia put in an extra pound of the
hard candy. June and Bertha felt unable to get treats, so in a way that makes
the tree loom larger. We promised to have a regular tree and we’ll all be
children and have a lot of fun out of it. – Ina,
Christmas 1932
Real time update:
“Not a creature was stirring, not
even a mouse.”
If a mouse isn’t going to stir at my
house, I have to take action. I figure setting the traps is Mike’s job, but he
kept asking me if I had set them, so finally I did. I put four on the shelves
in the garage, resulting in two catches the first night and two the second
night.
Kathy – 4; mice – 10,555,679.3
We arose this morning to a low of 24. Checking into next week, we saw that it's going to be cold. Since we were on our way to Orofino today for Harry Cummings' funeral, we decided to go earlier and winterize the farmhouse. KW
The "Old hard Christmas candy" doesn't sound appetizing. What do you think was going on there?
ReplyDeleteWe can still buy it today. It's just colorful hard candy in fruity or spicy flavors. They used to give it out by the sackful at church Christmas parties, Christmas parades, etc. When I was a child in Orofino, there was a community drawing every Saturday in December sponsored by the merchants. On the last Saturday, Santa moved through the crowd with brown bags of candy, nuts, and an orange for the kids. It was not skimpy.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure the candy was available in bulk and perhaps it still is in some places. I saw it packaged recently.
Never mind that Ina seems to speak of it with some disdain. I don't buy it often today, but when I do, it tastes just like Christmas.