The Facts from Clute, Texas • Page 29

Santa Continued from 1C The family would look for a holly or yaupon tree to bring home to decorate with tinsel or strings of popcorn. Hoefle can't remember what he got for Christmas in 1927, but he knows one thing "I never did get my oil derrick," he says, grinning. THE BRAZOSPORT FACTS Sunday, December IB, 1994 5C 1935 In 1933 The Facts printed only 21 letters to Santa Glaus, but the number was up to 69 by 1935. The reason for the increase is unclear. It may have been an easing of the Great Depression, more teachers making letter-writing assignments or it may have been the 1935 craze for Shirley Temple dolls.

Of those 69 letters, 16 little girls asked for Shirley Temple dolls. Here's a sampling of letters of the day: Dear Santa Glaus, I am a little boy 7 years old. I am in the low second grade. I have tried to be good so please bring these things for Christmas. I want a football, a football helmet and a gun that shoots wooden bullets.

Do not forget all the other boys and girls. Be good to my mother and daddy. Your friend, Raymond Brubaker Jr. Dear Santa Claus, I am 7 years old. I am in the high second grade.

Miss Young is my teacher. Please don't forget all the other boys and girls this Christmas. I want you to bring me a pair of.skates, a Billy Whiskers book, a doll and a doll trunk. Good-bye Santa. Mavis Estes Dear Santa Claus, I am a little girl 7 years old.

I am in the low second grade. I have tried to be good, so please bring these things for Christmas. I want a Shirley Temple doll, a doll bed, ironing board, house shoes, bath robe, doll buggy, some nuts and candy. Do not forget all the other boys and girls. Be good to my mother and daddy.

Your friend, Marjorie Sue Give. Dear Santa Claus: I am 9 years old in the.high second grade. Miss Young is my teacher. Please don't forget all the other boys and girls this Christmas. I want you to bring me a mandolin.

Good-bye Santa. Harley Tyson Dear Santa Claus: I am 9 years old. I am'in the high second grade. Miss Young is my teacher. Please don't forget the other boys and girls this Christmas.

I want a re ctor set and a tool chest. Good-bye Richard Lee Curbello Those last two boys, Harley Tyson and Richard L. Curbello, were best friends and classmates in Freeport. Both "boys" are now 68 years old. Tyson lives in Lake Jackson, while Curbello remains in Freeport.

Both boys get the things they asked for from. Santa. "I had probably heard someone playing a mandolin and liked Tyson to remember, all a 9- boy woul'd'want a mandolin for TYSON Christmas. "I believe I learned a couple of songs on it, and then had enough. My musical career was pretty short." His pal Curbello asked fora "rector set and a tool chest" and got them both.

Curtfello's sister, Ann Curbello Holt, PMDRPI i also had a letter CURBELLO published Freeport Facts of December 1935. She was one of hordes of little girls who asked for "a Shirley Temple doll and doll trunk." "I don't imagine I.cjid get a Shirley Temple Holt, who now lives in Missouri City. "My parents had a dry.cleaning business in Freeport, my father had paid the insurance premium on it to a friend who pock- One of the most popular gifts in the 1930s was the Shirley Temple doll. eted the money. Then the 1932 storm came along and our business was lost.

My father went to work fora competitor, but money was pretty tight, so I probably didn't get that doll, but I'm sure my parents gave us something with love." As for being a fan of Shirley Temple, Holt adds, "I guess I was. There were three movie theaters in-Freeport then, so we probably saw her there. Everyone wanted the same thing back then." PART II, covering Santa letters in the 1940s, will be published in Wednesday's edition of Brazos People. cupie. Check your Christmas knowledge with quiz By HUGH A.

MULLIGAN 1 By HUGH A. MULLIGAN AP Special Correspondent Here it is Christmas again, that "rolling time of the year," as Charles Dickens called it, "a season of hospitality, merriment and openheartedness, of feasting and revelry," 'Us the season for summoning up memories of Christmases past, for retelling time-honored stories around the fire, and renewing cherished religious rituals. And, like Mr. Pickwick and his friends at Dingley Dell, a chance to become a child again and "beguile the time with forfeits, blind man's buff, snap dragons" and other favorite parlor games after the bones of the noble bird have been removed from the groaning board. But just how wide is your knowledge of this favorite feast? Here are 20 questions to test your holiday IQ.

This Christmas quiz can be played as a live after-dinner game show, perhaps with your guests arranged into teams to supply group answers. Come then, everyone, rake up the fire, fill your goblets with Smoking Bishop or mulled cider and let us begin: The Questions: I. Who alone among the four Gospel writers told the story of The Three Wise Men? 2. What navigational aid guided the The fcThree Wise Men to Bethlehem? 3. What instrument accompanied the first singing of the carol Silent Night! 4.

"Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, please complete the quatrain. 5. Who wrote White Christmas! 6. Which singing cowboy popularized "Rudolph the Red-Nosed 7. Name the boy and girl featured in The Nutcracker.

8. What was Scrooge's wish for Christmas well-wishers? 9. Whose name was on the weed-overgrown tombstone in the desolate churchyard where the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come led Scrooge? 30. In Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory, what gifts did Buddy and his favorite cousin exchange each Christmas morning? II. What was True Love's gift on the fifth day of Christmas? 12.

What gifts did the young couple exchange in O. Henry's The Gift of the Magi! 13. In a word, what was the American general's reply to the German panzer kommand.ant demanding the surrender of Bastogne that bleak Christmastide 50 years ago? 14. What was the peculiar thing about the Christmas goose Sherlock Holmes investigated in The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle! 15. What possible connection can there be between Christmas and the three gold balls hanging outside a pawnshop? 16.

Which competing department stores altered their marketing methods because of the Miracle on 34th Street! 17. How many ships came sailing in VOn Christmas Day in the Morning?" 18. Queen Victoria is credited with popularizing which Christmas custom in England? 19. Who assured Virginia that indeed there was a Santa Claus? 20. When Santa whistled up his team in Clement Clarke Moore's A Visit from St.

Nicholas, what names did he shout out? The Answers: 1. Matthew. 2. "The star which they saw in the east went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was." Matthew 3:9. 3.

The guitar. Mice, you may recall, gnaVed holes in the bellows of the church organ. 4. "Put a penny in the old man's hat." 5. Words and music by Irving Berlin.

6. Gene Autry. 7. Fritz and Clara in Tchaikovsky's ballet; Fritz and Maria in E.T.A. Hoffmann's original tale, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.

8. "If I could work rriy will, every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart." 9. Ebenezer Scrooge. 10. They gave each other homemade kites.

11. Five gold rings. 12. Delia sold her luxuriant brown hair to a wig maker to buy a platinum fob chain for the gold watch Jim sold to buy her a set of tortoise-shell combs for her shorn locks. 13.

"Nuts." 14. In the words of the great detective himself: "It laid an egg after it was dead, the born. niest, brightest little blue egg that ever was seen." The egg, of course, was that valuable gem, the blue carbuncle, hidden in the crop of the goose. 15. Three gold balls are the emblem of St.

Nicholas. In addition to bringing gifts to good little girls and boys, Nicholas is the patron saint of sailors, merchants, pawnbrokers and newly weds. The gold balls symbolize the bags of gold the good bishop tossed through the windows of three impoverished virgins who were facing a life of prostitution for want of a wedding dowry. 16. Macy's and Gimbels.

17. Three. 18. Coaxed by her husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg, the queen adopted the German custom of decorating a fir tree at Christmas and helped make it a British tradition. With the advent of the penny post early in her reign, she also encouraged the sending of Christmas cards.

19. Editor Frank Church of the New York Sun. 20. "Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and. Vixen! On, Cornet! on, Cupid! on, Donner and Blitzen!" Scoring: Here is how our Christmas game show is scored.

Award one point for each correct answer and assess your yuletide aptitude according to this scale: 20 A perfect score, merits you and your team members an honorary D.T.T degree, Doctor of Tinsel Trivia. 16-19 Pin-your own stars atop the tree, accompanied. by spirited huzzas and an occasional "bah, humbug" from your less-gifted opponents. H-15 You rate an extra dollop of brandy sauce on your plum pudding for an above- average performance. 6-10 Let nothing you dismay; perhaps you excel at charades, pin the tail on the donkey or some other holiday parlor game.

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