It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

With last Saturday night’s snowfall, the first of the winter, “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!” Umbrellas were hovering above a steady throng of visitors looking for chowder, chili, and other hot goodies prepared and served by several Hamlet of Carmel food businesses. As the afternoon rain quickly turned to falling wet snow, it did not dampen the spirits of the carolers, the children who took a hayride, or the folks who watched the 34-float parade up Gleneida Avenue, and the tree lighting ceremony that lit up the lakeshore in holiday lights.

The first snow of the season could not have come at a more appropriate time. Somehow, I think Bill Shilling Jr., the Hamlet of Carmel Civic Committee Parade Chairman, who organized everything, had something to do with the incoming snowfall that had kids of all ages making snowmen on the lakeshore. As always, Santa Claus made an early visit to the Hamlet, too. It would be timely, before the snow melts, to take a picture across the lake, put it in a frame and tie a red ribbon on it to make for a conversation piece at Fourth of July parties!

The forecast for snow had my oldest friend, Mike McBride, calling me to go out deer hunting Sunday morning. Several inches had fallen overnight in the area we were hunting, and if I made one mistake, it was forgetting that I had a camera in my pocket, in case Mike or I or Mike’s son Kevin actually got a deer. None of us even saw a deer all morning, although the ground on the way in, and leading to and from the tree I had selected to stand by, was covered with deer tracks made during the night—always a good sign in the closing days of the regular gunning season here. But the local deer herd, knowing they were highly visible in the snow cover, stayed bedded down, not taking any chances, unless they were spooked by approaching footsteps crunching in the snow.

But had I remembered the camera in my pocket, I would have taken a picture of snow clinging to every branch, every bush, and every fallen log in my view from my stand. Or, a picture of 13 wild turkeys, walking single file in the snow, 40 or 50 yards away. Thinking back, I couldn’t have gotten a group picture of them anyway, because I only saw a couple at a time through the hanging snow cover, but clearly enough to count them, and I may have even missed a couple. It made bearing the chill of the cold morning, that had my fingers and toes threatened by frostbite, a worthwhile pre-winter hunting adventure. Just one picture of a couple of them would have made a lasting memory.

Mama and I filled several bags of holiday memories at a number of special day Christmas stuff sales at the VFW, and a couple of Hamlet churches on Saturday morning.

The Oasis Sportsmen’s Club will be celebrating their annual Christmas dinner event, being held at McCarthy’s in Lake Carmel for the first time, instead of Smalley’s here in the Hamlet, where out meetings are held each month. Still I won’t feel uncomfortable, since Ron McCarthy is my golf partner, and his daughter Annie is the owner (and she watches over me like a Christmas angel, every time I sidle up to the bar, or go out to the veranda to have a smoke or listen to a visiting band. I think Ron Pierce, retired from Region 3 Fishing, and his replacement will be there, along with Jack Stewart, who runs the Southern New York Fishing Derby each year. It will be a fun night, for sure.

The blue jays, crows, and other birds of winter that congregate here each day for their peanut and wild bird seed treats, are prominent sights in the now-melting snow that remains, as are the grey squirrels that call this neighborhood home. Mama and I are preparing to go and visit the grandkids Kevin and Kyle, to watch them do a little sleighriding in the back yard. Kyle may be a little resistant to joining his brother, though. Seems on yesterday’s still icy snow cover he went a little too fast down the sloping yard and crashed into the lawn border hedge. Reminds me of the time many winter moons ago, riding down on the back of a lone toboggan, with my late father- and motherin law, Clayton and Barbara Outhouse, with Mama in front of me and bailing off the back just before they crashed into a large bramble of berry bushes. Luckily my passengers got through the incident without a lot of scratches from thorns, but they never let me forget it, Mama included, who’s still here to remind me on snowy winter excursions like this.