Madison Messenger - December 18th, 2022

PAGE 8 - MADISON MESSENGER - December 18, 2022
opinions/letters
www.madisonmessengernews.com
Worn ornaments are the keepers of memories
I am a hard-core, tradition-driven holiday decorator.
My love of Christmas dates back decades. Many of
the knickknacks and baubles that hung on my tree
when I was a child made the journey through time and
space to the house I now call home.
A partially burnt candle in the shape of a fireplace
and chimney, adorned with a single strand of greenery
and a tiny Merry Christmas banner, has a special place
in a hutch once owned by my grandparents. The red
brick is now faded to a light pink, but a diminutive faux
fire decal still shines brightly.
In May 2021, Messenger reporter
Dedra Cordle covered the release of
my first book, “Bixby Timmons and
the Dragonthorp Riddle.” We were
donating every dollar of the proceeds
to Hershey Medical Center (Pennsylvania)
where my daughter was
undergoing treatment for leukemia.
The good news is she is currently
cancer-free, and The Bixby Timmons
Series has started to take off.
I grew up in Madison County and
was a student at Madison-Plains
Local Schools. I had so many people
find us on Facebook and other social
media outlets asking how they could
help support our cause because of
Dedra’s article. Because of the attention
Bixby has received, we have
been able to donate hundreds of
books to hospitals where students
are staying to be treated, and we
have also been able to donate thousands of dollars to
Santa’s workshop
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letter to the editor
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Next to the candle is a jumbo
pinecone adorned with a face
crafted out of cotton and smaller
pinecone arms that hold a decorated
candle. It was given to me
when I was 6 years old and spent
a summer visiting Vienna with my mother. The pinecone
was plucked from a forest in Austria and, in the early
1960s when I received it, was already decades old.
Atop my tree is a celluloid Santa face mounted on an
eight-inch, round, pleated aluminum circle. It crowned
Bixby books continue to give back
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Messenger Word Search
BEARD
BOWS
CHIMNEY
COOKIES
ELVES
FIREPLACE
GIFTWRAP
GOODWILL
HAMMER
JOY
LAUGHTER
PACKAGE
PAINT
Hershey Medical Center.
With book two, “Bixby Timmons
and the Secrets of Shadow Deep,” released
on Nov. 29, we don’t plan on
slowing down the giving train. All
proceeds from book two will also be
donated.
Accolades so far from book one:
• The above mentioned donations
• I have been in schools as a
guest speaker in Pennsylvania,
Ohio, California, Maryland, New
York, West Virginia and Virginia.
• We have 97 of our 99 reviews on
Amazon as five stars.
• Book one caught the attention
of an NCIS television show writer
who loves the book and agreed to
write a blurb for the back dust
jacket of book two.
Dwight D. Karkan
Waynesboro, Pa.
Solution on page 13
places
By Linda Dillman
PRESENT
REINDEER
RIBBON
SACK
SANTA
SLEIGH
SNOW
SURPRISE
TOOLS
TOYS
WISHES
WINTER
WORKSHOP
my childhood Christmas trees. When I got
married in the mid-1970s, my parents
passed the beloved tree topper on to me.
Santa once had a full curly beard, but over
the years the glue holding him to the metal
circle dried and his fiberglass curls fell off.
Last year, the topper got a makeover, but
with modern materials, the beard is not as
curly and shiny as it once was.
Perched on a hutch in another room is a
sad 18-inch tree that most people–but not
me–would have tossed in the trash years
ago. Its 20 branches of a green, cellophanelike
material function as needles mounted on
thin wire branches, albeit noticeably thinner as the years move on.
A block of green painted wood serves as the base and still bears the
original Grants (a long gone store in the Great Southern Shopping
Center) price sticker—a princely $1. The sticker is a reminder of my
7-year-old self saving my chore money to buy the little tree that has
since traveled across America and the Pacific Ocean to Japan before
making it back home to Ohio for good.
Gold garland is draped around the tree in our den–one that
stands guard over our presents until Christmas Day–and is another
childhood holdover. The garland, like the little tree from
Grants, has lost a lot of its original luster. It has been cobbled back
together over the decades as the string holding it in one piece has
weakened and broke. It now sheds more than our dog, but I would
never replace the garland (nor the dog). It is too precious and, even
in its state of disrepair, I continue to see its beauty.
Shiny new ornaments, sturdy modern faux trees, and tree toppers
and garlands that don’t shed are nice, but there is nothing like
looking at their older counterparts and taking comfort in knowing
they are links to the past and keepers of memories for the future.
Linda Dillman is a Messenger staff writer.
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