...and a Very Merry Christmas to You!

This past Thanksgiving I did something for the first time in
many years. Most years I catch maybe 20 or 30 minutes of the Macy’s Thanksgiving
Day Parade, and many years have skipped it altogether. This year, my family and
I watched darn near the entire thing.



I thought it was great this year, especially the music acts
that stopped and performed on the “main stage” area of 34th Street,
in

It's Christmastiiiiime in Ford City!

It was the one indoor marching band event of my high school
career. Early one Saturday morning each December, we’d pile into the buses for
the 20 minute drive south, passing through towns such as Argo (Always brought
to mind a box of corn starch. Still does.) and Summit to Ford City Mall for
their annual indoor Christmas parade. There we’d join with other school bands,
animal acts,

Christmas in Herald Square, 1974

When people think of New York City’s famed Herald Square,
one name in particular comes immediately to mind – Macy’s, of course. Its 110-year
old flagship, billed almost from the start as “The World’s Largest Store”, has
been a revered local fixture and a worldwide tourist draw for generations.


Pictured here, in a photo dating from the 1974 Christmas
season, are Macy’s next door neighbors

A 1950's Christmas in Martinsburg

It’s always amazed me how Kodachrome film can make an over 50-year
old scene look like it took place last night. That’s certainly the case here in
this beautiful night shot of a Christmas shopping crowd at a Peoples Drug store
in Martinsburg, West Virginia, from an original slide I bought some time back.



But this was well over fifty years ago, probably closer to
sixty, an infinitely