Highlands’ Early Years

Written By: Stuart Ferguson - Shakespeare and Company | Issue: 2021/12 – December

Angie Jenkins

Compiled by Angie Jenkins, Memories of Highlands’ Early Years…Stories by Native Highlanders, is a brand-new book containing first-person accounts of growing up here, as well as tales of earlier times gleaned from the old folks at home. It makes a wonderful Christmas present for anyone interested in “Old Highlands,” with lots of local color, funny stories, and touching reminiscences. 

Like Angie’s two earlier tomes, it’s full of vintage photos, but unlike them the images are smaller and interspersed among the text, to make room for all the wonderful stories. All together there are 18 contributions from Brysons and Wilsons; Crisps and Crowes; and other worthies, some of whom I actually knew, though I’m younger than I look.

‘Tis the Season, so let’s focus on Yuletide tales. 

Are you surprised that almost everyone in Memories of Highlands’ Early Years says how much colder and snowier winters used to be? That Aladdin’s Cave on the Hill, The Highlands Variety Store (1925-1983), operated first by Angie’s grandparents and then by Angie’s dad, Alan Lewis, features in multiple recollections. Perhaps because Santa made his one-and-only Highlands appearance at the five-and-dime, and all the local school children would troop in to make sure The Big Man in Red understood exactly what was required under the tree. 

Back then—O halcyon days!—folks did most of their shopping on Christmas Eve, so Mr. Lewis would stay open late and was a font of good advice for clueless husbands and fathers deciding on gifts.

Whether growing up in town or on farms in Horse Cove or Shortoff, there wasn’t much extra for presents at year’s end. 

“Christmas was slim,,” recalls Virginia Vinson Bryson, while the late Edna Phillips Bryson tells how local women got together to raise money so that every child in the community at least got a bag with an orange, candy and a toy. 

Families trudged through the snow in search of *the* perfect tree to cut down and bring home. 

The Creswell’s was always cedar: “Daddy said if it scratched, we would leave it alone,” remembers Mary Anne Calloway Creswell. Once that standoffish fir was set up, it was decorated with homemade ornaments such as, “sycamore balls covered with foil…carefully removed from cigarette packs. We thought they were gorgeous.” Mary Anne recalls that, “Mama started baking in early December: fruit cake, cookies, cakes, candy, fudge and divinity.”

  When it comes to thrift, Hazel Edwards Rogers has them beaten. She recalls that not only did her family make their own decorations for the tree, her mother (Hazel Althea Hedden Edwards) made her own glue for the paper chains! Take that, Martha Stewart!  Still, on Christmas Eve, there was always a sparkler for each child. “As soon as it was dark, we got to go outside and light them. We thought they lit up the whole sky.”