Sent: Fri, Jan 15, 2010 4:58 pm
Subject: Neighborhood icon
Dear Neighbors,
You have lived here a long time!
Remember this neighborhood sleigh that sat in Roy's yard every
Christmas? Roy says it has been in the neighborhood for about 40 years!
Do any of you have pictorial or verbal history you can share with the Civic League and
Garden Club ? I have just rescued the sleigh from obscurity, not used
for quite a few years due to disrepair ,and have it stored at Smith
furniture for an evaluation and estimate. Barbara is interested
in helping us find craftsmen. Any of you interested in working on this
as a preservation project? Pictures with Santa, anyone ?
Sharon Privett,
Garden Club President
And so, my mom learned from the old guard that the sleigh would traditionally be decorated by the Civic League or Women’s Garden Club and placed in the front yard of a different members’ home each holiday season.
I just dug through her old emails to find these pictures; I can’t take credit for helping - a little staining near the end, when I was home for a few days.
The sleigh sat in the garage for a good part of the year, as neighbors came and went, in an ever-tightening corkscrew to reach the holiday deadline.
They bit off more than they could chew, and I remember a somewhat tense time over Thanksgiving, and spilling into December that year.
But they got it done.
The drive home each Christmas is a hard drive. I always forget about the sleigh that mom helped rescue from obscurity.
Until I turn down into the neighborhood, and there it is, beautiful and still, all aglow in the night on my godfather’s front lawn, pricking me in the heart.
