Final Friday of 2014!
We’ve made it.
Actually, today is a holiday of sorts. Boxing Day. If you are English and either the employer of domestic help or their employee you know much more about the traditions that I do. I suppose our farming community celebrated at version of it when giving tokens of appreciation to milk haulers and mailmen. Local merchants gave gifts – calendars, yardsticks, or gadgets – to loyal customers. What’s the most memorable of these you’ve received or given?
Another task for today — if not completed amid confusion yesterday — is to separate the wrapping paper from the gifts. Careful now — we lost at least one, perhaps more, new tiny toys while doing this in haste.
Go ahead and use your own experience to form an image of “after”. And then pour your favorite beverage.
Fifty-two shiny, unblemished Fridays loom in front of us. Do you have a goal or resolution concerning them? Survival? Improvement? More reading?
At the amazing country store operated by my grandfather then uncle from the 1880s to the 1970s, Christmas was magic. An antique sleigh filled with wrapped boxes, a tiny tree covered with fragile balls were only part of the decorations. Striped to chocolate candy, candied fruit peaked out of waxed paper lined cardboard boxes and every gift you’d want was shown about the store. Each year Grandpa and Uncle Leonard gave their customers useful but lovely gifts, mostly dinner accessories, sugar bowls, toothpick holders, pitchers and more. The early pieces were made from custard glass, a fragile ware. I’ve looked everwhere, antique stores, auctions, people’s homes in this corner of Wisconsin for more “Compliments of the Levis Store” pieces. I only have two which I value.