Merry Christmas

Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Today I have been listening to a radio broadcast of Handel's Messiah and thinking about the records my mother used to play. I think The Messiah was on a 3-record set which could be stacked on the spindle of the record player so they dropped into place, one after another. After we had heard those 3 sides, my mother had to turn the stack over to play sides 4, 5, and 6. That was, at the time, a clever improvement over the earlier process of having to change the record after each side.

A barn became a home

For my December column, I wrote about Bela and Stella, the couple who lived for several years on the top of "Nichols Hill" (Locust Lawn property) in a remodeled barn. I recall the very special lighting on their Christmas tree. See New inhabitants in an old barn

See also my previous blog entry (9/28/09) about Bela and Stella.

Neither the barn, nor the hilltop it sat on, remain today. Route 95 cut through there in the 1970's. Bela and Stella had moved safely to Long Island by the late 1950's. The barn continued in use for a while as a "warming hut" for skiers at the Locust Lawn Ski Club. It was a comfortable place to relax after skiing up the old rope-tow.