Christmas on Willow Lane

When I was born we lived in a new house on Cedar Lane. The Daily Herald needed a picture of Santa so my mother made my sisters these red polka dot flannel pajamas for the visit. I am the baby in the picture. Santa is telling Cynthia to be a good girl and Christine is sitting with me on the floor. I still have that doll with pajamas made out of the same fabric. Mother was very good at making clothes for all our dolls.

By the time I was ten we were back from New England and we lived in an old pioneer foursquare house on Willow Lane. It had a nice porch shaded by three tall cottonwoods that snowed in the summer. Our kitchen was large enough for our range, refrigerator, table, and a piano and coal stove. My mother grew up on a farm so she was very good at cooking on the coal stove at Christmas when the extra oven and burners came in handy. (This picture was taken on Thanksgiving 1961 of me, Grandma Sessions, and big Uncle Ken.)

To have enough for Christmas shopping we saved our allowance and did odd jobs. Still my parents usually gave us a little extra cash so we would have enough money to buy for our big family of seven children. Purses in hand, my three sisters and I were dropped off at Woolworths on Center Street just west of the Provo Tabernacle. We walked around the glass display cases set on the old hardwood floors, making the circuit once or twice. So much to see! For ladies the store offered a choice of fancy perfume bottles, gold lockets, charm bracelets, and for the gents they had wallets, tie clips, pens and winter gloves. Back and forth we walked, choosing, consulting each other, measuring our money. We settled for the affordable monogrammed handkerchiefs for Dad and went in together for perfume for Mother. Meanwhile my parents shopped for the three boys at J.C. Penney's down the street, and they picked us up in the station wagon where we held our bags tightly to us to keep our gifts secret.

At home we wrapped our gifts and put them under the tree. My father was very particular about the look of our tree. I especially remember the year we had a flocked tree. Who would not want a tree covered with snow, right there in the living room? Dad could not resist and we set to work out on the porch. As children our job was to take squares of toilet paper and cover each bulb on the string of lights, then wrap each with a rubber band. When every light bulb had been covered, Dad put the lights on the tree. First he, first wound the colored bulbs around the trunk of the tree and then he spiraled the string back down the tree out on the branches. Dad mixed the solution with the powder and sprayed the flocking mixture up and down and around the tree to cover every green pine needle with the fake snow. After the toilet paper was taken off each light bulb on the string, we hung the ornaments. Dad plugged it in and we had a beautiful white tree with glowing colored lights, a winter wonderland in our living room. It was worth all the trouble.