"White Christmas" is a favorite song, too. When your Grandma Yoder and I were little kids we lived in California, and that's the first time I heard that song--Christmas 1944. It had come out in 1942, so if I'd heard it before I was too little to remember. We went to a community center for a Christmas party (I don't think we had a church), and a group of teen boys sang it. Just about everyone in our community (Alameda, CA) was from somewhere else--and it was damp and foggy as usual in the Bay Area--so the song had a lot of impact. By Christmas 1945 we were back in Mt. Morris, the war was over, dad and his brothers, brothers-in-law, and cousins were home (about 500 men just from our rural area were in the military), the country had recovered from the Depression, and I still remember the gifts. In 1944 I'd gotten a small glass cat figurine, but by 1945 we had "real" presents--like a sled! One was the doll house that we 3 sisters were to share, and you and your mom as children played with it later in the basement of my parents' home on Lincoln St. My mom's camera was broken when I was little, so I have no photos of those Christmases, but I do have one of your Grammy Yoder in the snow in front of our house at 203 E. Hitt St. Probably winter 1940. She's the little one--she was very tiny for her age.
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