There are several things that indicate that Christmas is here : eggnog, a box of chocolate-covered cherries (better than a trip to the dentist to see if you have any cavities) and a card from Joe Snell with a handmade ornament in it.
I don’t know how many years Joe has been making these things, but I could lay my hands on five of them in the top of the ornament box.
Photos of Joe and his Dad
Joe and I went to school together, worked on the Central High School photo staffs and were members of Trinity Lutheran School’s Scout Troop 8. I got to know him and his parents well. Here are some other stories with Joe in them.
- Joe’s Mother’s obituary
- Stan Snell (the comments are better than the story)
- 1963 Boy Scout Pre-Camporee
- Photographic feeding frenzy
- Troop 8 group shot
My mother-in-law made fancy window shade pulls like these. Quite an art!
I remember the Snell family very well. Stan practically begged my father to let him have enough property to build a new home on next to our old home on Mason Street. At that time, Mason was a narrow, dead end gravel lane that ended at the west edge of our parents property. The mini farm Ed Blank property was across the street. Gene Caston built a small new brick home at the corner of Mason and Fountain after he purchased the neighborhood grocery at the corner of Fountain and Mill. My father had a huge vegetable garden behind where the Snell family built and a big flower garden in the area they built in but he was willing to give part of that up in favor of good neighbors. Mrs. Snell came to our house frequently to visit with my mother and to get cooking tips. Stan came over on weekends sometimes. The two boys were a bit younger than I but I knew them. They were good kids; probably more polite, mannerly and not as disruptive as I but I was generally in a different, older age group. I do remember that Mrs. Snell was not happy with the dust on the road after they built their new home although it had not changed since they first looked at it. The entire neighborhood changed when the Blank property sold; Mason Street was widened and paved and connected with the street to the south. Some builder put up a bunch of small, cheap homes and brought an end to a very peaceful, quiet and pretty area. It pretty much ruined my parents old home that they had taken such pride in. The last time I saw it I said that I never wanted to see it again, it looked so bad. That old place had been used as a field hospital during the WW I Spanish flu epidemic according to Mr. & Mrs. Hayman who remembered it from her childhood.