A ride on the Santa train

Here is Bea taking a ride on the Santa train that runs from a station in New Hill, NC. A girl always wears her nicest hairbow on the Santa train and takes along a cookie or two to enjoy as she looks out the window. What an ideal way to spend a cold, frosty Sunday afternoon in December. She is living a very sensible and imaginative life. Santa is nice, but he's not the main event. Bea doesn't know yet about how Christmas has been commercialized beyond recognition, and therefore she is able to approach the season with great joy and enthusiasm. She inspires me to the core!

Breaking news: My clothes dryer went on the blink last night. I was upstairs watching disc 5 of the Civil War and seeing the paintings of Lee's surrender to Grant. I loved that Grant had on his old mudsplattered clothing because he had not wanted to keep Lee waiting while he changed out of his work clothes. That's so real!

When the film came to a stopping point, I went down the stairs to put the wet clothes into the dryer. I then pressed the start button. NNNNNNNN said the naughty dryer. Then I held the start button down for a very long time. NNNNNNNNNN said the naughty dryer, and this time white smoke began to waft from its innards. If I could have figured out how to open the thing up, I would have put out the fire. But I just had to stand there and hope it would go out on its own. (It did.)

So today I begin trying to either get it fixed or replace it. So much for living simply. I cannot see drying my clothes on a clothes rack and having to iron everything.

Years ago when we lived in Wendell, NC, I knew an elderly woman whom we called Miss Nellie. Miss Nellie showed me a pair of lacy fingerless gloves that her mother had knitted from tobacco twine. The gloves were to be worn by Miss Nellie's sister as she pinned clothing to the clothesline in the wintertime.When Miss Nellie showed me the little ivory-colored gloves, it made me think of back when I was a little girl, before my family had a clothes dryer, when I helped my mother bring in damp clothes at the end of a winter's day--armfuls of shirts and pants and towels, not quite dry and sparkling with ice crystals. We would hang the clothes to finish drying on a rack next to the Warm Morning heater in the middle of the living room. But now I have lost my innocence. I have to have a dryer. Woe is me! Santa, are you listening?