Christmas Eve in the Hills of Hannibal
I grew up in the Midwest, with real winters. I don’t miss shoveling snow, trudging mini-mountains of sludge or wading slush.
Snow plows scraped up and down our street and past our driveway, installing hard-packed barricades of misery and rock salt as they went; pretty discouraging for a kid with an aluminum snow shovel already curling at the corners. The first rule of shoveling was get out to the driveway, no matter how early, before anyone drove over the powder and turned it into cement.
I do miss the steep hills and the trees of Hannibal, Mo., and the spectacle of new snow.
One Christmas Eve, I was 12. I looked out my bedroom window near the top of Pleasant Street and gazed down the wide, snow-covered valley and then up the other side to the horizon a mile away. Snow lit by moon and stars blanketed trees, lawns, cars and rooftops. Strings of streetlights stretched into the night. Incandescent bulbs shown yellow in picture windows. Security lights stood lonely guard duty in dark lots. Hannibal sparkled with all the sincerity of our tree in the front room. Surely, this was Santa’s kind of town.
Guy D. Johnson is a writer and marketing communications professional. Previously an animation studio owner, daily newspaper editor, reporter and photographer, volunteer fireman, railroad bridge gang helper, FM radio station underling and cave guide. He has lived on farmland trusted to the sun and rain; atop a wooded hill; beside great rivers; upon an arid, high plateau; and at the subtropical coast of the Gulf of Mexico. For 20 years, he worked and wrote in New Orleans.