Our favorite family Christmas story as told by Grandma B takes place in the winter of 1934. Born Elvira May Billington, May 13 or 14, 1922, in Livingston Montana, Blondie had been her nickname since she was little because she had very curly blonde hair. When her hair turned to silver, she preferred to be called Grandma B.  Her dad taught her to pitch hay, milk cows, and take care of the farm animals.  Her mom taught her to garden, cook, can, crochet, sew and other handicrafts.  They washed clothes in a tub with a washboard and hung them to dry from the solar power of the summer sun, they did the same in the winter, except then it was called freeze dried.

 

They had a wood burning stove to cook on, to heat their hot water and to heat their ranch house.   The family often picked wild huckleberries in the hills and then can them into jelly jars...but most of the berries were eaten fresh with cream and honey.  In the summer, Dad would go to town to get ice to freeze some of those delicious huckleberries.  In the winter he just cut some ice from the frozen Skunk Creek or Brackett Creek nearby to keep in their icebox. They looked forward to having huckleberries for Christmas breakfast.

Brackett Creet

 

Sid Billington, Smokey and Bird

One snowy December day Dad hitched up his team of horses to his sleigh to get the mail from the Clyde Park, Montana post office. The post man had a package waiting for him.  The postman saw it was an orange crate from California, so he put it near the pot belly stove, so the oranges would not freeze. This must have been a Christmas surprise sent from his brother, Les, who lived in Merced, California at the time.

Pot Belly Stove

Orange crate looked something like this

No sure if this is what his sleigh looked like, but the horses were black like these 

Dad put the crate under blankets in the sleigh nestled near hot rocks and as soon as he got home, he put it near the wood burning stove until Christmas morning.

Wood burning cast iron stove

Oranges were a rare treat in Montana.  Everyone was expecting to have juicy California oranges for Christmas breakfast, but they were totally surprised when the crate was opened, and it was one big mound of hard Ribbon Christmas Candy---all melted together.!

Dad just laughed, got his hammer and chisel, and chipped off a big piece for each of them.  Blondie was not disappointed that there were no oranges that Christmas because candy was also a rare treat. There was so much candy that when the kids chiseled off a bit at a time…it lasted until spring!

 

Grandpa Sid Billington