There’s nothing like the Christmas season in a small town. It’s a large part of what makes me nostalgic for the Bedford of my youth. The sights, the sounds, the feelings all combine to make the season special and hard to duplicate.
My extended family lived many hours away from Bedford, so we spent very few Christmas mornings in town. But aside from Christmas Eve and Christmas day, we were rarely out of town for the month of December.
With Hallmark stores displaying the holiday ornaments as early as June and advertisements pushing their holiday sales in September and October, it may seem that Christmas preparation takes up half of the year prior to that special late December day. But, for me, the season always began right after Thanksgiving.
The people I’ve met from all over find it odd that we would have the Monday after Thanksgiving off from school. I’d explain that it’s just one of those holidays primarily celebrated in rural areas. As a non-hunter, I appreciated the hunters who forced our school district to make the “First Day of Buck” and the “First Day of Doe” seasons into official holidays. Having two four-day week leading up to Christmas vacation was never something that I took for granted.
Even if it weren’t for the day off from school, you always knew Christmas was on its way when the lights were illuminated on Evitts Mountain. Our house sat near the base of the mountain and faced uphill. Walking out our front door any December evening, we could clearly see Santa and his reindeer or the word “NOEL” lit up in brilliant incandescent light.
Arriving downtown on Richard or Juliana Streets, we were greeted by with more lighted figures hanging from the light posts. Bells and snowflakes provided a festiveness with or without snow falling or people walking along the sidewalks.
As the years pass, it always seems that snow was falling “back in my day.” Salt ground into the streets and snow pushed into mounds provided the white aura to the whole town. Our “white Christmas” was always there; at least it is in memories. There were those oddly warm Christmases with us playing outside in shorts, but those times seem obscured by the big fluffy flakes landing on the tongues of tightly bundled children shuffling along the streets in their winter boots.
It was on those sidewalks along Juliana and Pitt Streets that the real feeling of Christmas emerged. Women wrapped in long coats with knitted scarves and hats ducking in and out of stores as they shopped for just the right presents always gave friendly greetings as they pass. Men dutifully cleared the driveways and sidewalks so that Chip Engle and Lola Felton and Dave Koury could offer their wares. Bill England and Dick Letrent were waiting at the pharmacist’s counter for those of us who didn’t handle the cold weather as well as most. And the snow continued to fall.
My earliest memory of solo Christmas shopping has me scouring the selection at Murphy’s for just the right record to fit my friends’ tastes. With a school child’s meager budget, I was forced into the “cut-out” bin where leftover records were on sale for two or three dollars each. As proud as I was of the effort that went into those choices, the end result was a more thoughtful gift than I provide as an adult today, even if they don’t remember what the gift was.
Today, going to the mall or shopping online misses most of the fun. We run into far few people we know at the mall and when was the last time you saw someone you knew at Amazon.com? Never one to appreciate getting clothes for Christmas, I’d take an entire holiday of shirts and pants to experience Christmas shopping in downtown Bedford again. And to see the lights on Evitts Mountain again would be worth trading all of my toys for another pair of boring khakis.
Showing posts with label small town. Show all posts
Showing posts with label small town. Show all posts
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Background
I spent 20 years trying to get out of this place
I was looking for something I couldn't replace
I was running away from the only thing I've ever known
Like a blind dog without a bone
Bon Jovi’s “Who Says You Can’t Go Home” sums up the idea for many of us ex-Bedfordians. From early on, we all decided that there had to be something outside the borders of Bedford County. Like most of my classmates, we couldn’t wait to graduate and get out of town.
Those of us who “escaped” usually felt bad for the ones we left behind. It felt like we were getting out of jail but our buddies hadn’t received the same pardon. Sure, we could go back and visit but it was still like returning out of pity. That’s the way it looked initially.
In my case, the seeds of my envy of those “left behind” started when I was in college. While attending Altoona Campus of Penn State (along with 9 or 10 other members of my graduating class), we found Altoona just as boring for the under-21 crowd as we remembered Bedford. So what did we do to entertain ourselves and our new friends? We took road trips…to Bedford.
Yes, car loads of college kids would drive down to Bedford from “the big city” to find entertainment. Whether it was to visit our old teachers during the day or to surreptitiously pop into the Friday night dances at the Roll Arena, we found Bedford more interesting than the much larger city of Altoona.
So after graduation from college, I moved…back home with Mom and Dad. I took a few jobs including selling cars and painting parts for Hedstrom. But I still clamored to get out of town. The final escape would arrive about a year after leaving Penn State. My connections to my hometown were never completely severed. Even with the death of my father. Even with my sister and my mother each moving out of town. Somehow, Bedford has always been “home” for me.
And many of my childhood friends feel similarly. I have classmates who went to great universities and lived in big cities. Most of them have made new homes elsewhere but a substantial number of them have returned. The trappings of 24-hour cities and corporate coffeehouses on every corner appeal to many but many more see the benefits of knowing your neighbor…and your neighbor knowing you.
A famous book was titled “It Takes a Village” and Bedford could have been the model for that village. My parents were the strongest influences on me growing up, but there were dozens of other residents of Bedford who did their part, big and small, to help raise me.
Bedford is small town Pennsylvania. It is small town America. For good and bad. I hope to relay many of my personal stories as well as the stories of others who grew up or raised their family in and around Bedford County. In these stories, we can all see parts of ourselves. The memories may be important, but it’s what we’ve learned and how we’ve passed the lessons on to others that became invaluable.
I was looking for something I couldn't replace
I was running away from the only thing I've ever known
Like a blind dog without a bone
Bon Jovi’s “Who Says You Can’t Go Home” sums up the idea for many of us ex-Bedfordians. From early on, we all decided that there had to be something outside the borders of Bedford County. Like most of my classmates, we couldn’t wait to graduate and get out of town.
Those of us who “escaped” usually felt bad for the ones we left behind. It felt like we were getting out of jail but our buddies hadn’t received the same pardon. Sure, we could go back and visit but it was still like returning out of pity. That’s the way it looked initially.
In my case, the seeds of my envy of those “left behind” started when I was in college. While attending Altoona Campus of Penn State (along with 9 or 10 other members of my graduating class), we found Altoona just as boring for the under-21 crowd as we remembered Bedford. So what did we do to entertain ourselves and our new friends? We took road trips…to Bedford.
Yes, car loads of college kids would drive down to Bedford from “the big city” to find entertainment. Whether it was to visit our old teachers during the day or to surreptitiously pop into the Friday night dances at the Roll Arena, we found Bedford more interesting than the much larger city of Altoona.
So after graduation from college, I moved…back home with Mom and Dad. I took a few jobs including selling cars and painting parts for Hedstrom. But I still clamored to get out of town. The final escape would arrive about a year after leaving Penn State. My connections to my hometown were never completely severed. Even with the death of my father. Even with my sister and my mother each moving out of town. Somehow, Bedford has always been “home” for me.
And many of my childhood friends feel similarly. I have classmates who went to great universities and lived in big cities. Most of them have made new homes elsewhere but a substantial number of them have returned. The trappings of 24-hour cities and corporate coffeehouses on every corner appeal to many but many more see the benefits of knowing your neighbor…and your neighbor knowing you.
A famous book was titled “It Takes a Village” and Bedford could have been the model for that village. My parents were the strongest influences on me growing up, but there were dozens of other residents of Bedford who did their part, big and small, to help raise me.
Bedford is small town Pennsylvania. It is small town America. For good and bad. I hope to relay many of my personal stories as well as the stories of others who grew up or raised their family in and around Bedford County. In these stories, we can all see parts of ourselves. The memories may be important, but it’s what we’ve learned and how we’ve passed the lessons on to others that became invaluable.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
