While sifting through the many boxes of slides from my parents’ house, I came across this picture of me and my siblings in the hallway on Christmas morning. This was at our house in Old Mission where we grew up. I look to be one or two years old, so I’m going to guess this is around 1961 or 1962.
Mom and Dad started married life around 1949 in the old farmhouse across from our barn just north of Mapleton. My three older siblings – Dean, Ward and Carol – spent their earliest years there, but in 1959, Mom and Dad bought ten acres in Old Mission and started building a house. In 1960, the year I was born, they moved to the new house. “New baby, new house,” Mom always used to say.
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We were one of those households where the kids got up at the crack of dawn on Christmas morning to open presents. But apparently, Mom and Dad always had last-minute Christmasy things to do, so we were forced to wait in the hallway until we got the go-ahead to race down to the living room and open presents.
Merry Christmas, Gazette Readers! Sending you good tidings of great joy as we head into a new decade – 2020, wow!
Here’s another photo of us a few years later on the piano bench in the living room. This is probably around 1963 or 1964 maybe? I look to be three or four years old (and in some kind of holiday sugar haze). I still have that piano and that “Sleigh Ride” sheet music on the piano. And check out Ward’s new truck!
SUPPORT YOUR INDEPENDENT LOCAL NEWSPAPER: I started Old Mission Gazette in 2015 because I felt a calling to provide the Old Mission Peninsula community with local news. After decades of writing for newspapers and magazines like the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Family Circle and Ladies' Home Journal, I really just wanted to write about my own community where I grew up on a cherry farm and raised my own family. So I started my own newspaper.
Because Old Mission Gazette is a "Reader Supported Newspaper" -- meaning it exists because of your financial support -- I hope you'll consider tossing a few bucks our way if I mention your event, your business, your organization or your news item, or if you simply love reading about what's happening on the OMP. In a time when local news is becoming a thing of the past, supporting an independent community newspaper is more important now than ever. Thank you so much for your support! -Jane Boursaw, Editor/Publisher, Old Mission Gazette
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