I begin to wax nostalgic in early December and find myself jonesing for some orange-slice candy and English walnuts.
Back when the earth was young - in the late ‘50s and very early ‘60s - Fitzhugh would have a community Christmas tree and program and we kids looked forward to it for weeks.
The experience started in the fall with a fundraising pie supper in the school gym.
The women in our community would bake pies that were auctioned off. Whoever bought the pie would eat it with whoever made it, which originally was a courtship ritual, I suppose.
Mostly, it turned out to be husbands who bought their wives’ pies, with an occasional swain trying to win the attention of a lady fair.
It was quite the night. Slew Ballard, who was our barber, was also a first-rate fiddler and usually would play a few tunes. Someone would auction the pies and when they were all sold, the crowd would spread out through the bleachers in the gym and eat the pies.
If you have never been to a pie supper, you need to scout around for a small town that still does such things and go to one.
The spirit of community is touching and the quality of the pies is unsurpassed.
My mother always took a pumpkin or pecan pie, because that’s what we all liked the best.
Occasionally, people would swap slices and you could end up with a lemon meringue, chocolate, cherry or, if you were truly blessed, egg custard.
For a second-grader, it’s pretty hard to beat that and stay completely legal.
The money from the pie supper paid for the annual Christmas tree.
This was a community event, held in the school gym, and featured some singing and a short program, followed by the entrance of the Man of the Hour, the Elf Himself, Santa Claus.
They would have a Christmas tree that seemed to the grade school me to be 100 feet tall, but adjusting for memory probably wasn’t much past 10 feet.
Parents would sometimes bring small gifts and Santa would read out the name of the kids they went to.
But the best of all were the little brown sacks of candy, nuts and fruit that they passed out to all the kids.
Just about the time everyone’s blood sugar was settling back down from the pie supper, we’d all gorge on orange-slice candy.
We’d get several pieces in a bag, probably because it was the cheapest candy available, a handful of English walnuts and usually an orange.
Life was innocent then and sitting on the gym floor, basking in the love, warmth and camaraderie of a small country community, came to symbolize for me the essence of the holidays.
Sometimes I wish the whole world could join in a pie supper and a community Christmas tree.
I think we’d all get along better.