When I was a “tiny twig”, before I became a “bent branch” (or a “twisted trunk”), I owned a handful of records. Only a few of those were Christmas records, but one of the records advertised a Charley Pride album “Christmas in My Home Town”. I had one Charley gospel album, and I for years wanted his Christmas album. In my adult life, I was able to get my copy of “Christmas in My Home Town”. As irony often dictates, when we want something and don’t have it, there is a void. When we get what we want, it sometimes comes to us multiple times. Let’s just suffice it to say that I have more than one copy of Charley Pride’s “Christmas in My Home Town”.

So a new Christmas tradition was born for me. The official personal start of my Christmas season, most joyously celebrated after dark on Thanksgiving Day, is to listen to Charley Pride’s Christmas album. I do this while performing other of my few traditions.

One of these traditions harks back to my undergraduate days at Lincoln Memorial University. The girls’ dormitory closest to the Campus Center, East Dorm, had a most wonderful sweet lady custodian, Mrs. Gladys Bolton. Mrs. Bolton was a widow, a pleasant, remarkably sweet woman. For a Union County tie, Tina Wilder, now deceased, former third grade teacher at Maynardville Elementary School, was married to Mrs. Bolton’s grandson.

Mrs. Bolton ate her lunch in the LMU cafeteria at the same time on certain days as did my group of friends. We loved to have Mrs. Bolton join us, and she seemed to enjoy our company. Many an otherwise humdrum meal was made more pleasant by Mrs. Bolton’s presence.

After I graduated, I kept in touch with Mrs. Bolton. She once sent me a letter. In that letter, she asked me how my mother was doing. She wrote, “I would love to meet her sometime and eat her beans.” Mother and I thought that was just the funniest saying. Mother and I began meeting Mrs. Bolton and her friend Mildred (another wonderful lady) a few times a year and going out to eat. Our favorite spot wound up being Captain D’s in Middlesboro. Once we met Mrs. Bolton at her church for a service and received communion with her.

Once Mrs. Bolton invited us to her home after we ate. Mrs. Bolton worked in ceramics, and she showed us several items she had made. I was particularly impressed with a country church with stained glass windows, an old fashioned bell in the belfry, and a music box that played “Amazing Grace”. I commissioned Mrs. Bolton to make one of these for me. A few years later, when I was dating my wife, I had Mrs. Bolton make another so we would have a matched set. I keep the church displayed and lit year round, and it is a constant reminder of the sweet friendship of a friend now gone.

Another of Mrs. Bolton’s creations that I loved was a mother of pearl Christmas tree with a red star on top and red birds on the ends of the branches. I commissioned her to make one of these for me. This treasure I like to take out and display in my home library while Charley sings about his home town. This and a very few trinkets have been the extent of my Christmas holiday decorating for several years.

Mrs. Bolton passed away a few years ago, and I was blessed to be asked to be a pallbearer. Other than Mrs. Bolton’s grandson and his wife and Mrs. Bolton’s friend Mildred, I was a stranger. I remember several of the elderly ladies of her church asking rather loudly, “Who’s that man there?”

Mrs. Bolton’s love and affection still warm my heart after all these years. That’s how we remain alive on earth after we pass from this world—in the hearts and minds of those we loved and who loved us. I heard a sweet thought recently that perhaps should be a wish for each of us—“I hope I mean as much to someone as you mean to me”. Hopefully they won’t say, “I’m so miserable without you it’s just like you’re here!”

Now we enter the Thanksgiving season, a time to be thankful, among other things, for those whom we love and those who love and have loved us. How dreadful would be the journey of life without loved ones and friends!

Next week, I’ll share with you about a treasure I found in a stack of junk. Until then, Faithful Reader, I leave you with this thought from my email world:

All of us could take a lesson from the weather.
It pays no attention to criticism.