"the time of year to extract the joy of life"

James Johnston writes in his bi-weekly column:

FRANKLIN —

This is the week before the sixty-fifth Christmas of my life time. My first Christmas was celebrated on Dec. 25, in the year 1944. Hitler was taking a licking from the Russians in the east and the Americans and British and their allies in the west. 1944 was to be Hitler's last Christmas. I don't think anybody was too sad about that.

My father was in the Philippines. My mother posed me in all of my tubby cuteness under the Christmas tree in my little Christmas outfit with a very large stuffed Panda Bear, that was to be my boon companion for many years to come, for a photograph to be sent off to my dad in the far Pacific in that last year of the war. There were other things under that tree to be sure, and years later I would dig them up from the earth around the outside of the house.

Continue reading about the items he buried around his house in the Milford Daily News here