Christmases enlivened by explosions, real and simulated

Thanks to Linton Weeks at NPR for these two North Carolina examples of the mostly forgotten tradition of Christmas pranks:

— “Early on Dec. 25, 1953, the town of Stony Point, N.C., was rocked by an explosion near the railroad tracks that woke local folks and shattered store windows. According to the Statesville, N.C., Daily Record three days later, ‘It is believed that for a Christmas prank, someone set off a charge of some explosive, probably dynamite, failing to realize the damage which could result.’ ”

— “In her 2013 book The Legacy of Bear Mountain: Stories of Old Mountain Values That Enrich Our Lives Today, Janie Mae Jones McKinley tells of a Christmas prank her grandfather — a railroad man — pulled on his two brothers-in-law in rural North Carolina [near Zirconia in Henderson County] during the Great Depression. It was customary for neighbors in the valley to shoot shotguns in the air on Christmas Day. People would take turns and the one who had the most ammunition was the winner — and by extension, the most prosperous. McKinley’s grandfather figured out a way — using a wooden board and a sledgehammer — to make a noise that sounded exactly like a shotgun blast. So he could outlast everyone. ‘After it b’come clear I’d won,’ McKinley’s grandfather would explain while laughing, ‘I kept smackin’ the board with the hammer ever few minutes for awhile — to show ’em I still had plenty of shells!’ ”

 

Kids in ’30s looked like adults, not like ‘kids’

“Immersed in silent film that depicts everyday folks in rural, 1930s North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia, I realized that young people back then looked pretty much the same as the adults … only smaller.

“Take the 13-minute clip from Clayton, N.C., filmed circa 1936-1937. Like the older men in the movie, little boys mostly wore long pants and shirts that buttoned all the way to the throat. Like the older women, little girls mostly wore modest blouses and matronly overcoats. Boys flashed sly smiles like their fathers; girls showed on-camera reticence like their mothers. Teenage-looking guys played basketball in long pants and ties. Teenage-looking girls rollerskated in long dresses….

“There is in the film little sense of a childhood as we know it today. The clip is representative of the hundreds of hours of footage shot by North Carolina photographer Herbert Lee Waters and recently digitized and released by Duke University Libraries.

When did America begin allowing children to have a childhood?…”

— From “Back Before Children Looked Childish” by Linton Weeks at NPR (Feb. 19)