Gran had a Christmas tree with lights on it that were birds.  And also some of those lights that bubble.  They looked like candles, but when you turned them on, tiny bubbles went up in the glass.

We always had popcorn strings and tinsel on the tree.  I can remember stringing the popcorn and hanging the tinsel on the branches.  Of course the tree was real.  Pops cut it down from the back of the farm and dragged it to the house.  I'm sure there were presents, but I don't remember them.  Just the tree, the decorations and the lights.

Gran had an ice box.  Nobody had refrigerators.  In the summer, she was always saying to me, "Janie, close the door to the box or the ice will melt."  Oklahoma summers were brutal and the only cool place any where was standing in front of an open icebox door.  Under the icebox was a drip pan which had to be emptied every so often as the ice melted.

Every town back then had an ice house.  The ice man would load up his truck and make deliveries house to house.  Nothing in the box was very cold because the system was inefficient--especially when grandkids kept opening the icebox door.  When refrigerators came along, the ice houses vanished.  Progress has a way of eliminating an entire era.

My dad had a refrigerator store once.  There were lots of Amish in our county who didn't use electricity.  So my dad got a contract to sell Servel refrigerators--which were powered by natural gas.  Once he sold a gas refrigerator to one of the Amish, he had a hard time getting enough of them in the store.  They all wanted one.  Gas is natural.  Electricity isn't.  At least that's what the Amish believe.

My home town, Pryor, is in the middle of Amish country.  Every now and then you will see them going somewhere in a buggy.  Or on a tractor.  We also have Mennonites.  They cook and serve food at a cafe in the area and the truckers coming down Hy. 69 know where to stop to get a meal.  Real fried chicken.  Real mashed potatoes.  Real cherry, blackberry, peach, pumpkin, pecan pies.  All you can eat.  Mennonites, Amish,  Methodists, Baptists and a bunch of others.

I grew up in heaven on earth.  Smack dab in the middle of America.