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SENIOR SELECTIONS DECEMBER 2019 - The most memorable of 2018
The most memorable memory: The best of 2018
While preparing for the 2019 December issue of Senior Selections, many people wanted to talk about the memories shared last year.
Some were funny, some sentimental and a few were tearjerkers, but the Times’ staff members agreed they were great too.
Please enjoy a few holiday memories from 2018:
We grew up on a small farm south of Brazil, and we had animals and things like that. One of my fondest memories of Christmas happened when I was 8-10 years old, about 1965.
We had some great neighbors, Forest and Estell Hyatt, who were like a second set of grandparents to us four boys. I’ll never forget it. There was a knock on the front door about five in the morning, and we were up early because it was Christmas. We went to the door and it was Forest and Estell, and they had gifts for us.
One of them was a gunny sack full of Rhode Island Red laying hens. And I thought that was one of the greatest things to get our very own laying chickens. I was going into the egg-selling business.
So with that, I also got a brand new set of OshKosh bib overalls, and Forest always wore OshKosh overalls. I thought that was just something because I had overalls just like Forest had.
Now that’s a great Christmas when you get a brand new set of overalls and a gunny sack of Rhode Island Red laying hens.
Brian Wyndham
The first year I helped during the Shop With A Cop program is probably the most memorable for me. I had the three most wonderful little girls. They were the sweetest, so well behaved and so appreciative of everything they got.
It sticks in my mind the most. They didn’t want toys or anything like that. The little girl wanted a new dress and some shoes for her school program. How many children do that? Most kids want toys, and all she wanted was a new dress. It was something I have just never forgotten.
Connie Wyndham
I’m the prankster at Christmas in our family, which is why I don’t want to share my name. My favorite prank was the year I boxed up a small necklace from a bubble gum machine for my daughter in 27 gift-wrapped boxes in various sizes. She thought it was a VCR and got this little trinket. She didn’t talk to me the rest of the day.
“She will know who I am.”
In 2001 I was in the military on the ship the USS Bataan, off the coast of Afghanistan. I spent that Christmas with a bunch of kids from the Midwest playing cards because we were the only ones who knew how to play Euchre.
I don’t know where they found it, but we had lobster and steak for Christmas dinner, sang karaoke and watched Harry Potter that night.
That’s when I learned what Christmas is about and that you often make your family where you go.
Sarah Tellechea
When I was young, we didn’t have much for Christmas. I was the youngest, and most of the siblings were older and gone. So out on the farm, way back from nowhere with no one around, it was just me.
So Christmas wasn’t really very much. That is until I got married and then we had a lot of Christmas. Joan, my wife, loved Christmas. Our family, with the girls Kim and Teresa, had big Christmases and did a lot of decorating. In the last years of Joan’s life, we had 28 trees throughout the house, all with lights on them.
There were 30 boxes of Christmas decorations up in the attic. She and I both loved Christmas. We had a $550 light bill every Christmas, but it was very worth it.