Imperial Valley press., 1914-01-02
THE GREAT CHRISTMAS
GATHERING AT HOMEBURG

In the December American Maya
zine, George Fitch, the Peoria humor
list, writes a funny piece describing
Christmas at Homeburg. Following is
an extract showing how people go
back to the small town for Christmas:
people come home for Christmas
all over the world, but in Homeburg
you don't merely come home to your
family, you come home to the whole
town. A week before the 25th the
clans begin to gather. Usually the col
lege folks come first. Sometimes we
have as many as dozen, and the
whole town is on edge to see them
It's next to circus parade in interest
because you never can tell what new
sort of clothes the boys are going to
spring on US. In the grand old days
when Delaney Payley and Sam Singer
used to blow in for Christmas they
walked up from the depot between
double lines of admirers, and their
clothes never failed to strike us with
awe. l remember the year when Sam
came home with one of those over
coats with sort of hood effect in the
back. / never saw one before or
since. He was also wearing a felt
hat as flat as soup plate that year
and two quart pipe fitted carefully
into his face, and when old Bill Dor
gan, the drayman, saw him he threw
up both hands and cried, BY gosh, it
amt possible!
Then the children begin coming
back. There is a great difference be-
tween Homeburg and New York re-
garding children. In New York child
is personal property. But in Home
burg a child belongs to the whole
town. A birth notice is real news
item in Homeburg. l suppose every
baby is personally inspected by at
least two hundred citizens. We crit
cize their care and feeding, suggest
spanking when they are little older,
culver unanimously with horror when
they begin to flip freight trains, or
get scarlet fever, and watch them
grow up as eagerly as you New York
ers watched the Woolworth Building.
When they are graduated from high
school we are all there with bouquets
and presents, and we have an equity
in the whole brood. Molly Strawn, the
washerwoman's daughter, got more
y
"That's why Christmas means so
much more to us. At Christmas time
the town children come home. Will
Atkinson comes home from Chicago.
He's doing very we'll up there, and it
takes him two hours to get the length
of Main street on the first day after
he arrives. Everyone has to hear
about it. Sadie Gastit comes home
from Des Moines with baby; regular
custom of hers. Sometimes she makes
the same baby do for two years, but
usually it's a new one. | remember
Sadie when she was only knee high to
a grasshopper and her mother spanked
her for climbing the Republican flag
pole during the Mckinley campaign
The Flint children come down from
Chicago to visit their aunt. There
were only boy and girl of them when
they left fifteen years ago. Now there
are eleven, counting wife, husband,
and acquisitions. Last year AID Bridge
brought new wife home from Denver
to show US. Year before last Miss
Annie Hamill, who has been teaching
in MINNEAPOLIS, brought down young
man to show her family. She was
going to be exclusive about it, but did
it work? Not much. She had to show
him all around We just happened
over there in droves. Everybody loves
Annie and we were afraid for little
while that she was going to be an old
maid. The young man will bring her
down this year suppose. They were
married last June"