1958-12-25: ​​~TOUR STOPS~---images---audio---transcript---notes---pictures---links---site navigation
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1958-12-25​: tour stops---images---~AUDIO~---transcript---notes---pictures---links---site navigation
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1958-12-25: ​tour stops---images---audio---~TRANSCRIPT~---notes---pictures---links---site navigation
The Claxton fruit is here and I have had some.
The Black Walnut cake came Tuesday and we had some for dessert for dinner.  Edie was glad not to have to provide a dessert.
Roger cooked liver - he is a master hand at it.
​
Wayland
Christmas Day at 11:15 AM.

Dear Eva:

When I said I was writing the first part of a letter to you Helen + AG - the only people in the living room said to “send there love” so here it is.

We have already had the Christmas tree and the children are playing - Ming with her doll carriage, large enough for a young baby, and Roger with his electric train superintended by his father.  Edie Sam, and Mukta have gone to the Christmas service at the Episcopal church in Weston - the Wijesinha family are C. of. E.

Clara and I did come Saturday when Edie could come for us.  AG came Monday and has done her jitney work; she took Clara + me + herself to lunch Tuesday at Ethel’s.  Doris came in after lunch - all very pleasant.  Wednesday, she went to Boston to get Mimi, accompanied by Betsy and did a few errands for the family and me.  I hadn’t anything for Lucy and Edie suggested shoes for “Henry Jones,” Lucy’s 6-7” doll who is the problem child (and grandchild), so at an outlay of 15¢ AG got the shoes and stockings.

Roger came home at noon and had plenty to do.  Then he went to meet the Wijesinhas on the 6:30 train at North Station, taking Ming along.  Ming has been too much excited and much more difficult than at Thanksgiving.  Today she is all right, and no child could be better.  Roger was getting very much excited - he wanted an electric train, and yesterday said that he could not sleep in the night for thinking about the train he wanted.  He got it: his father said he had bought it several years ago - at a sale, I believe - and had it waiting in the attic until it was the right year…..Stop to talk with you…good to hear your voice and we wish you could sit down to dinner with us: Roger, Edie, Everett, Helen, AG + Mimi, Sam + Mukta Wijesinha, Clara + I make the grown-ups table.  Then there are 4 Stokeys + 3 Wijesinha children - a mere 17, if I counted right.  There are 3 dogs: Vanya, who lives here, Honey and Amos from Falmouth, and the bob-tailed black kitten, Pat.  Helen is doing the turkey - an enormous bird.

Last night it was almost 8 when they arrived - Roger with Sam, Mukta, Sanjiva (a boy about E’s age), Anila (a girl, 6) and Rajiva, boy near Lucy’s age, a little older, but not as old as Roger.  Edie fed all the children at once at the kitchen table: fish chowder, salad (lettuce, tomatoes + avocado) + milk pumpkin pie.  Then we grown-ups ate in the dining room, same menu except coffee instead of milk - all very good.  Tuesday night They went to bed without a protest and most uncommonly quietly for fear they would not be allowed to stay up and see the company.  The three older made it but Lucy succumbed and was in bed when they all arrived, and fast asleep.

After dinner was cleared away we got the stockings ready.  Elizabeth had them out and had put labels with the 7 names on them.  AG wrote poems, I, and then helped wrap things - the things for the stockings were mostly wrapped - 7 piles on the floor.  It was a merry party, and wound up with eggnog around 11:00.  Mukta is lovely and full of fun, and wears lovely saris.

I am sure that you want to know where and how we all slept!  I am not sure about all the children.  AG and Mimi had sleeping bags (living room floor) and so did Elizabeth - porch floor.  I think the 2 Wijesinha boys had Elizabeth’s room and bed.  Sam + Mukta had the guest room, Clara and I had the back room, Ming had the nursery, Everett + Helen made beds from the cushions on the davenports in the porch and slept in the dining room - near the dogs which had to be taken out in the night.  Honey really should be put to sleep, permanently, but Everett doesn’t approve it and keeps Honey in Falmouth, except when they come up here for holidays.  Roger2 and Lucy slept in Roger’s room - the new room (not quite finished, not papered) over the dining room.  You will find a good many changes in the house.  We did not go to bed until after midnight - the children went about 9:30; and morning began at 7 - almost on the stroke; that is about the time it begins to get light.  After that there was no more sleeping.  The stockings were all hung on the mantle in Edie + Roger’s room, so they had the fun of seeing the opening.  When I got up around 7:30, Lucy was on Roger’s bed.  I asked her what Santa brought her and she held up a little box of cereal - characteristic of Lucy!  Her main interest is eating with lapses to look after “Henry Jones.”  The other children ate their cereal and tangerines, and some had their apples to, so they got along until the breakfast very well.

The grown-ups had breakfast buffet style in the dining room: cranberry bread (with nuts) which Helen brought, Norwegian Christmas bread which I had made last Friday and wrapped in aluminum foil so that it kept well, coffee - two pots of good coffee - and tomato juice.  We ate whenever we were ready to - I think there were about 6 when I ate.  It was all early, so that all the Christmas presents were distributed by the time the party started for church.

2:30 PM
We have had dinner and the older children have gone skating.  It is a sunny day, very pleasant, clear + cold: it is 20° now with the sun shining on the thermometer: it was 4° this morning at 7.  I am glad I am going away for the winter.  (Ming has come up to put my sweater clip on - one of her favorite activities and I find it necessary to ration it, and sometimes take turns with Roger.  My red sweater feels comfortable with my gray woollen dress with red silk trimmings.  Ming says to tell you she has a big baby doll carriage.)

Betsy gave me earrings and Kay sent me earrings.  Maggie + Al sent me mints - 2 kinds: Clara says they are special.  Kay sent some cakes - cookies also - not her more wake [???WHAT???].  I am taking them on the trip.  Bill, Grace et al. sent me pullman slippers; Helen + Everett a cake of soap on a cord, for showerbaths.  Sam + Mukta 2 paper knives from Ceylon.  Clara a little pitcher in Royal Copenhagen china, blue, nice with my Chelsea set - a lovely little thing.  Roger + Edie had some prints made of the picture of Mother when she was young.  You will have one when I have a bit of leisure you are to have one….repetition is a result of paying too much attention to Lucy + Rajiva who are playing together very nicely.  Lucy has a new doll - I wonder if she will put put “Henry Jones’s” nose out of joint - the new one is larger - 12 inches or so, I think, in length.

Helen + Everett are going back this afternoon taking Ming and Mimi is going back to Boston as she has to go to work at 9.  Her engagement to a Middlebury College man is to be announced at New Year’s.  She attended Middlebury College and met him there.  I was surprised to see her so slim.  I remember her and Judy both as stout when they came to Mr. Packard’s funeral in Halifax.  She is slim tall with a nice figure - very nice-looking, and nice and helpful.

My chief helpfulness was cutting up the bread for the turkey stuffing - not much for an able-bodied woman 2 ⅔ loaves.  Clara put almost all the Christmas cards on strips of green crepe paper and AG put the rest on the pillars with Scotch tape.

AG did not do much in the way of Christmas preparations, not much money and no time.  The stenography course takes a good deal of time and she says it is going pretty well.  She missed several lessons coming here for Christmas but wants to do some studying on them here if Edie can produce the right book - and she thought she could.

3:30.  Everett, Helen, Ming and 2 dogs have gone.  With Betsy and Sanjiva (?) out skating the house is quiet, except that Lucy is wheeling the new doll (Tiny Tear?) in a very rattly baby doll perambulator or whatever it is - it isn’t a new one.

If this letter is incoherent it is from too many distractions 

11:30 PM Friday
And I am sitting in a “mess” of everything in my bedroom.  Clara is in the study almost ready to go to bed.

We four - Clara, Mukta, AG and I arrived here about 10:30 this morning.  I went to the college to get your check cashed (before I lost it) and found everything having vacations so I took it to the A+P and got the money there.

Fredda came to the rescue in the matter of showing Mukta the College - I was full of work.  So she took Mukta, Clara + AG to Northampton to the Tavern for lunch, then to see Smith College and Amherst.  Mukta is a most delightful and appreciative person.  She was so pleased not only to see 4 colleges in one day but to see the Connecticut River!

I called up the Atkinsons.  We are to start tomorrow as near 10:00 as we can make it, I have been finishing the Grammatid paper today - among other things - doing up the plates and posting them $4.50 registered air mail.  Tomorrow I’ll send the manuscript at a higher rate but it will not be so heavy - $2±, I think.

Fredda came to dinner - scalloped oysters - fair to middling, and then stayed and visited with Clara.

Tomorrow I must rise early, finish here and then go to Clapp and seal up my fern cultures.  We are to call Fredda and she will take us up.  Clara’s bags are there.  She did some shuffling there this afternoon.

If we don’t get away until 10:30 I may get your letter.

Love,
Alma

​
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1958-12-25​: ​​​tour stops---images---audio---transcript---~NOTES~---pictures---links---site navigation
Christmas Day was on a Thursday in 1958.

Ages of Roger’s and Edie’s children at the time:
Elizabeth/Betsy 9
Ming 8
Roger 5
Lucy 3

1.
The Claxton fruit is here and I have had some.
The Black Walnut cake came Tuesday and we had some for dessert for dinner.  Edie was glad not to have to provide a dessert.
Claxton fruitcake and black walnut cake - yes, I remember that Aunt Eva always sent those.
Some of the black walnut cake got taken on a road trip - see:
2.
Roger cooked liver - he is a master hand at it.
I remember that my father cooked liver, but I was too young to like it.  By the time I was old enough to notice, he wasn’t doing it anymore - probably something to do with none of my siblings liking it either.

3.
Helen + AG
Helen was Edie’s mother, Roger’s mother-in-law, and my maternal grandmother.
AG was, of course, Fred’s daughter Alma Grace.  Fred had died in 1956.

4.
Edie Sam, and Mukta
Sam and Mukta were the Wijesinhas, from Sri Lanka, though at the time it was called Ceylon. This Christmas is legendary in my family.  We had met Sam the summer before.  (That's another story.)  This was the first time we met Mukta and the three Wijesinha children, though there had been phone calls.  Over six decades later, the Stokey-Wijesinha connection is still strong and important to us.

5.
AG came Monday and has done her jitney work
A jitney is an unlicensed taxicab.  I remember Aunt Eva saying she was a jitney driver for her friends in Atlanta (or was it Coral Gables later on?) so this seems to be a word commonly used by Alma and Eva.

6.
lunch Tuesday at Ethel’s
This must be Alma's friend Ethel Jackson.

7.
Wednesday, she went to Boston to get Mimi
Mimi was Edie’s first cousin MImi, a niece of Helen’s.  Her father, Helen's brother John, was a hotel manager for Treadway Inns, so he and her mother were probably too far away for Mimi to go to see them for Christmas.

8.
I hadn’t anything for Lucy and Edie suggested shoes for “Henry Jones,” Lucy’s 6-7” doll who is the problem child (and grandchild), so at an outlay of 15¢ AG got the shoes and stockings.
I have a very vague memory of the doll Henry Jones, but it may not even be a memory, because the doll was named for a real boy named Henry Jones.  I think the real Henry may have been born that very year.  The doll that I do remember is the one that the Wijesinhas brought for me that Christmas, whom I named Nicholas at somebody else’s suggestion because I was too young to understand about St. Nicholas.  We don’t do saints in my family, so very likely the suggestion came from Mukta.

9.
Then he went to meet the Wijesinhas on the 6:30 train at North Station, taking Ming along.
The Wijesinhas took the train down to Boston from Montreal, where Sam was studying for a year at McGill University.  What I find interesting is that I believe that Betsy has a clear memory of going to North Station - but Alma has the details later on in the letter.  And I imagine that two Stokeys plus five Wijesinhas and their luggage would have been enough to fill one stationwagon.

10.
Everett, Helen - Edie’s parents, ages 71 and 61 at the time.

11.
AG wrote poems
AG was not a poet.  We wrote poems - bad poems - to go with the presents we gave.  I believe Aunt Alma started this.  I have childhood memories of my family sitting around the kitchen table late on Christmas Eve groaning over the impossibility of writing poems for the various presents.

12.
AG and Mimi had sleeping bags (living room floor) and so did Elizabeth - porch floor.
The porch was not an open porch.  It was a big family room with a wall full of windows.

Clara and I had the back room
That must be the room over the kitchen, which ended up being my brother Roger’s bedroom.

13.
Honey really should be put to sleep, permanently, but Everett doesn’t approve it
Oh dear.  Honey was about 13 years old at this time.  And the stories of Everett’s unwillingness to hurt animals are countless.  He literally - and I do mean literally - would not hurt a fly.  Put it outside using a glass and a piece of paper, yes.  Kill it, no.

14.
Roger2 and Lucy slept in Roger’s room - the new room (not quite finished, not papered) over the dining room.
This must be the room that ended up as my room, a tiny anteroom to the attic.

15.
I am glad I am going away for the winter.
To Hawaii!  See:
​16.
Maggie + Al sent me mints - 2 kinds: Clara says they are special.
The mints (along with the previously mentioned black walnut cake) also went on the road trip to Hawaii.
Clara a little pitcher in Royal Copenhagen china, blue
Alma collected cream pitchers.

17.
Lucy has a new doll - I wonder if she will put put “Henry Jones’s” nose out of joint - the new one is larger - 12 inches or so, I think, in length.
That sounds like the right length for Nicholas.

18.
Helen + Everett are going back this afternoon
Grandpa would never leave his and Grandma's cats (Pish and Tush) for too long.

19.
Her engagement to a Middlebury College man is to be announced at New Year’s.
This must be Andy Brown, whom Mimi did marry, happily.

20.
I remember her and Judy both as stout when they came to Mr. Packard’s funeral in Halifax.
Judy was Mimi’s older sister.  Mr. Packard was C. Morton Packard - Helen’s father, and the grandfather (one of the grandfathers, anyway) of Mimi and Judy, and of Edie.  He died in August 1950, 8 years before this letter was written.  Interesting to learn that Alma attended his funeral.

21.
So she took Mukta, Clara + AG to Northampton to the Tavern for lunch.
​I have confirmed with AG that the Tavern would have been The Wiggins Tavern, a favorite restaurant of Alma’s, Fredda’s, and AG.  It is still in existence.

22.
I have been finishing the Grammatid paper today
The paper got finished - see: I posted the drawings for the grammatids Friday and Fredda took the manuscript to the P.O. Saturday
I just wish I could find something online that would tell me how to spell grammatid - if indeed it is grammatid.
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1958-11-25​: ​​​tour stops---images---audio---transcript---notes---~PICTURES~---links---site navigation
These pictures were not in Alma's letter.  My brother-in-law Ron had the scans and sent them out in early 2023 after a Zoom call that included Anila (the middle Wijesinha child) and a few of us Stokeys.
Picture
Sam, Betsy, Roger2, and Lucy. This picture was taken in the summer of 1958, when we met Sam but not the other Wijesinhas.
Picture
Suzy Reade (a friend of Edie's), Mukta, and Edie. This picture was taken at a New Year's Eve party at somebody else's house during the 1958 Christmas visit.




​The picture below may be the one of which Roger and Edie had copies made for Alma:

Roger + Edie had some prints made of the picture of Mother when she was young.

The file name for the scan is:
prob. Grandma Margaret Provines Stokey' - J.S. Young studio, Steubenville, OH

...and I doubt that there were very many pictures hanging around of Mama Margaret as a young woman.
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