Hearing the wind howling at the windows, we sisters huddled closer to the fire-crackling woodstove in our farmhouse in Half Moon community (near Blytheville, Ark.). It was the early 1940s. We marveled as we watched the spatting snow make designs on the windowpanes. It seemed to be etching a message.
I could hear Mama in the kitchen humming some Christmas carol—maybe it was Silent Night—as she perfumed our spacious kitchen with aromas from chocolate, pineapple, pecans, allspice and ham.
Daddy was constantly going through the front door—laying in wood, taking out ashes, and traipsing back and forth to the barn to make sure that the two mules and the cow had sufficient shelter from the intense cold. Daddy’s rafter-shaking on the front porch was the signal for
