On the Moraine XXXIV
By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist
Once I started to Hillsboro High School in the fall of 1964, I had access to the stores in Hillsboro, for the school bus took me there and back every school day.
I was making a little money, earnings from helping neighbors put up hay, and I had an account at Farmers & Traders Bank.
On my own, I decided our Christmases need a little more cheer brought forth by presents. My freshman year of high school, I ordered a mailbox from the Sears Catalog Store. When it came in, I picked it up at lunchtime and took it back to school. On the school bus home that afternoon, I obliterated all the printing on the box with my pocketknife so that my family could not see from the outside what it was. Try doing that today.
The present I remember from the next year was the new, super-deluxe ironing board I got my mother. She had this old beat up wooden one. By the way, I still have the one I that I got her. It is in a storage room less than 30 feet from my office. Someday, someone will throw it away, but not me.
Then there was the year I went all electric. I got my brother a transistor radio, my dad a soldering iron and my mother a new iron to go with her ironing board from the year before. Dad couldn’t figure out why I got him a soldering iron, and I couldn’t explain it, either, except I wanted to go all electric.
All thanks to the employment I had putting up hay.
When we moved to the farm, we opened Christmas presents on Christmas eve, a change from when we lived in Troy and opened them on Christmas morning. We made this change because now we went to Portsmouth to my grandfather’s house on Christmas Day. I enjoyed this for there were usually aunts, uncles and cousins that came and went all day there.
The other big holiday of the year was Easter. In those days, there were three churches in Marshall – United Methodist, Church of Christ and Presbyterian. The churches would rotate who was going to host the sunrise services.
They would open the school, and we would all walk over to the school and have breakfast after the sunrise service. Then, all of us farmers would have to go home and feed the animals before we came back for church at the regular time.
I enjoyed singing in the choir for the sunrise service. My favorite hymn was “The Holy City” (Jerusalem, Jerusalem). Words by Frederic E. Weatherly. This was sung in the movie “San Francisco” in 1936 where the soundtrack won an Academy Award for Best Recording. You can find it on YouTube.
My selfish favorite special day was my birthday, July 19.
Being in the middle of the summer, Mother always baked me a German chocolate cake and we would make a freezer full of homemade vanilla ice cream (I can hear a certain group of folks in the Sugar Tree Ridge Community laughing as they read this now).
No matter what else was going on, holidays were always a special time on the farm.
Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga. and is a columnist for The Highland County Press.