Working at Wellfleet Town Hall, I find that memories of growing up here come back easily to me. All it takes is a slight change in the light, a sound, a breeze, or the whisper of a fragrance.
The snow started early in the morning that cold December day 57 years ago. The big fat snowflakes drifted down, in no hurry to settle themselves with a million uniquely different companions.
I think the teachers at Wellfleet Elementary failed to get anything into our little heads that day. It was the first snow of the season, and the Big Event was that night: going to see Santa and get a stocking at town hall.
We’d moved from the woods at High Toss to the center of town a year before. The front porch of our old house was an add-on made of glistening one-and-three-quarter-inch shiplap that had been salvaged from the Chequessett Inn after it succumbed to the ice storm in ’38. Where the windows had been on the main house there were now six-over-six cubbies for books.
My mom was struggling to get my brother Kurtis’s hand-me-down boots over our little brother Jimmy’s Buster Brown shoes. He was in a green snowsuit, his red hair sticking out from under the hood. A toddler, Jim wasn’t too happy about the shoving. My baby brother, Laymon, was sitting in a chair next to the commotion, calmly taking it all in. Our youngest brother, Lee, had not been born yet.
Kurtis had his new black buckle boots on, all done up, and his navy blue jacket and hood zipped up. I had my navy blue boots (no buckles for me!) and my matching jacket done up, but I didn’t have my hood up, as I hated hats as much as my mom did. Our mittens, knitted by Mom, were in our pockets.
Kurtis and I were jumping with excitement, trying to get those boots on Jim by our sheer energy. After the fifth “Can we go, Mommy? Can we? We can walk uptown!” she gave in. Turning to us, wearing her heavy coat and a tiny triangle kerchief over her head, her face flushed from the struggle, she said, “OK! OK! Stop in and see Grandpa and Grandma at the store, and I’ll meet you there. Put your hood up, Karen. Both of you: mittens on! Stay out of the road!”
Abandoning my big-sister duties, I flew out the door, with Kurtis right behind me. We ran down our road onto Chequessett. Back then, the snowplows didn’t start at the first flake. It would take more than the three inches that had fallen by then to get them out. Besides, there wasn’t a lot of traffic, and most people knew how to drive in the snow.
The snow was still falling steadily. The ruts the few cars had made were the consistency of cornstarch: they squeaked when we walked on them. As we turned onto Holbrook, we realized that if we made a run at the rut we could slide along for quite a few feet. This was magical! Run, slide, run, slide. One of Kurtis’s buckles came undone and flapped as he ran: clink, clink, slide.
There were no cars to interrupt our adventure. We ran, we slid, the snow fell all around us, and the world was quiet. Christmas lights glinted off the snow in the near dusk. We could see our breath and took turns blowing “smoke” at each other. I remember feeling like we were the only two kids in the world, running and sliding down the middle of Holbrook Avenue.
We turned the corner at Hopkins Cleaners onto Main Street. Now we were confined to the sidewalk — no sliding here. We ran past the bank and the Catholic church. I remember looking up at the lightbulb cross at the top of the steeple, lit only during Christmas season. Every telephone pole had a live Christmas tree attached to it. Past the stores (since burned down), the Lighthouse restaurant, the liquor store, Alice Winterbottom’s place, and into the News Dealer, my grandparents’ store.
A quick hello to Grandpa, who was waiting on a customer, and we ran to the back of the store where Grandma was marking and putting up merchandise after a day of cooking at the elementary school cafeteria. “Well, hello, you two!” she said. “Is Mommy with you?”
“She’s coming! We’re meeting her here, then we get to see Santa! And get our stockings!”
We were jumping up and down, but she managed to corral us for a rose-scented hug and kiss on the cheek. (I’d give anything for one of those hugs and kisses today.) Then she handed us each a piece of hard candy she kept under the counter just for us.
Mom came, having found a place to park, carrying Laymon and holding Jimmy’s hand. We got into the line. That night the line went right down the middle of the town hall lawn and off to the side. Christmas music was playing from the top of the cupola. Snow was still falling. The moms chatted and tried to keep track of all of us kids.
Finally! It was our turn. Santa sat in a big red velvet chair borrowed from the Methodist church for the occasion. He shook our hands with his white-gloved larger one, and his elf handed us our stockings. What a stocking it was: red felt with white fake fur trim and little green jingle bells. Sticking out of it was a huge peppermint stick, at least 10 inches long and an inch thick. The zing of the peppermint hit my frosty nose. Ah, the smell of Christmas!
Out the door, we raced to the car, Jimmy on Kurtis’s lap, Laymon on mine.
Back home at the scarred oak table in the middle of the kitchen under the one light, we opened our prize: the peppermint stick, then a metal blue-and-red mailbox replica that was actually a coin bank, complete with a little key. My favorite of all the toys: a green corduroy dog stuffed with straw. It was a boxer. I can still feel the corduroy of that little dog, Fido, as it fit into my hand. I kept that dog for years.
Next was a mesh bag of gold coins. Kurtis managed to open all his coins and eat the chocolate before Mom could stop him. Jimmy tried to eat the coin, wrapper and all. Next was the orange. Mom would tell us each year that when she was little, “getting an orange in your stocking was the prize of the season, as fresh fruit was hard to come by on the Outer Cape.”
At the toe of the stocking was the popcorn ball, with crinkly red and green plastic around the sticky ball. Mom would be pulling the pieces out of our pockets when she did the laundry later that week.
And there the memory fades. But the first snowflake, a shot of cold winter air, a Christmas carol, or the smell of peppermint will bring it back again.
Karen Murphy is Wellfleet’s town collector.
