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Dewey Walton was born in Industry, PA in 1898. The Walton farm was near where the Willows is today. In 1900 his family moved to Monaca and he grew up on 15th Street. In this brief account, he remembers the Christmas days of his youth.
"It wasn't common to have a Christmas tree but we usually did. My brother Ike worked in the glasshouse so we always had glass balls for the tree. There were no electric lights on the tree in those days, so we had candles. Since Christmas trees were so unusual, one man who just came over from Germany had a tree in his house and it made the headlines of the paper.
"I used to bring my friends into the house to see our tree. One time there was a boy on crutches and when he saw the tree, he started breaking the balls with his crutch. I couldn't do anything but holler 'til my mother came.
"Mother worked day and night to make a big Christmas for us - baking and cooking. We always had a turkey. We would have a keg of beer in the cellar. There was nothing about Christmas in school. We didn't sing carols or anything. Every morning we would sing "My Country 'Tis of Thee" but nothing special for Christmas. We would get two days, maybe three days off for the holiday.
"Stores didn't decorate for Christmas the way they do now. One man I knew was a timekeeper in the mill who worked nights. Every Christmas eve he would leave the mill, rent a bus (there was only one bus) and go to Rochester to buy toys and gifts for his large family, then go back to Monaca and back to work.
"I was the baby of the family so I always got a nice gift. One year it was a ring; another year I got a little red wagon. I used it to haul junk and scrap iron to make a little money. Then I remember it laying out in the yard, all rusted. I got a wheelbarrow later to haul scrap.
"One time I got a sled for Christmas, but there was no snow. I was sitting on the sled in the front yard when a man came along and took my picture. I remember the picture - it showed the holes in the bottom of my shoes. Sled riding was a big thing in Monaca. We used to ride a four man bobsled down the hill through the railroad underpass (Brodhead Road). The farmers would lend us a horse to haul the sleds back up the hill. One time we were coming down the hill and the bobsled hit a horse and killed it.
"A farmer coming into town one night said he saw a light in the cemetery. A bunch of us guys went to find out what it was. We found a man sitting beside his wife's grave with a lighted Christmas tree.
These are the things that I remember about Christmas."
