A Nelson Christmas Eve Story

Every year at Christmastime I am reminded of the very first Christmas we had here in Nelson. I don’t remember the exact date, but on one particular day in mid-ish December near suppertime there came a knock at the front door.

In a recent edition of the Black Fly Express, our editor used the word “plethora.” It reminded me of a town meeting a number of years ago . . .

To see if the town will vote to proclaim the Town of Nelson a voluntary and positive anachronism, and to authorize the Selectmen to . . .

In 1977, Sam and I saw an ad in the Harvard Crimson (thank you Karen Tolman) for a camp for rent in Nelson, near a place called Tolman Pond. We had some friends in Peterborough and Hancock, so we decided to rent the cabin to get out of Cambridge in the summer.

Edgar Seaver made a daily trip to the post office in Marlborough to pick up the mail for delivery. One day . . .

On the evening of November 28, 1989 the Munsonville store burned due to a faulty ballast in one of the fluorescent lights.

One day I spotted a parking meter. I loaded it into my truck, and by the time I got home I had contrived a plan.

Cemeteries are a wonderful place of quiet calm and the surroundings are perfect for meditation and contemplation.  On a warm spring day I was walking among the souls in the Munsonville Cemetery and came across the final resting place of one of my great aunts.

Coming home early one day I met Bud French working on Log Cabin Road. His father, Win, was supervising. I rolled down my window and requested that the road be paved with a concrete median strip painted green.

One Christmas, we gave a couple of our children walkie talkies. Suddenly a deep voice cut in, saying, “This is Santa. It’s time to go to bed!”

We emerged in the Village, with the trademark mailboxes. My heart leapt, and I thought to myself, “this is where I want to live”.

We think that the northern part of heaven lies down a stretch of dirt road that leaves the paved Harrisville Road in southwestern New Hampshire.