Editor’s Note: This story was originally published on Dec. 26, 2015.
—
Hartford
The town’s 10,000 people have taken a beating lately. In recent years, the Great Recession has bled wallets dry, the ugly stain of heroin has bloomed throughout the streets, while the town itself has reduced staff, plundered its own reserve funds, and put off needed repairs to the parts of its infrastructure that have threatened to collapse beneath the twin weights of age and neglect.
Though there is reason to despair — and on the average day, many do — on Christmas morning, there are signs of hope and unity.
In the front window of the Main Street Museum, a white Christmas tree, a sign directing Zen practitioners to a rear entrance, an electric menorah and an advertisement for palm readings all jockey for space, creating a mood that is decidedly, cheerily nondenominational.
In fact, all of the storefronts along Main Street give passers-by some hope of good cheer; Revolution, a clothing store, has a sign indicating that a percentage of its sales will go to the Haven homeless shelter; other windows have small glittering origami cranes and promises of an upcoming “Ecstatic Dance;” warm golden picture frames surrounded by golden ornaments; a goose dressed like Santa Claus and elves sitting at small desks, frozen in the act of hammering together wooden toys; rich furs and red ornaments draped over a bed of fluffy snow; and on a small sign beneath a wreath on the door of the Junction Barber Shop are the most boldly optimistic words of all.
“Business is great,” it reads. “Life is wonderful. People are terrific.”
6:45 a.m. Bernie Quigley
Inside the Hotel Coolidge, Christmas is marked by a small tree with red, gold and silver baubles on it, and a half-empty candy dish. For Bernie Quigley, who has been manning the front desk since 11 p.m. on Christmas Eve, the dead quiet of the night contrasted sharply with the clatter of the last few days at his home in Haverhill.
After years of quiet Christmas dinners with his wife of 31 years, Jane, by great good fortune all four of their grown children have come home this year, two of them with girlfriends in tow.
One son brought home a real prize. When the son and his girlfriend disembarked the plane from Madison, Wis., they carried with them a duck, recently shot by the girlfriend’s father.
“We never had duck before. We never had game before, because we’re not really hunters,” said Quigley.
Quigley watched with just a hint of trepidation as his 23-year-old son produced a shopping list that had been written by the man who shot the duck. His son, Quigley said, was not known as a chef.
In fact, “it was the first thing he ever cooked,” said Quigley. His son went to the store to get bacon, cheese, jalapeno peppers and teriyaki, and then dug out the old Weber grill, which had already been retired for the season.
Quigley said he laid aside all reservations at the first bite.
“Everyone was moaning, it was so good,” Quigley said.
As good as the duck was, that son’s success might have been upstaged by his brother, who brought home his girlfriend for the first time.
Quigley had never met her, but he’d seen her a few days ago. On television. While watching the Miss Universe beauty pageant.
“My son,” he said, “brought home Miss Cayman Islands.”
7 a.m. Tammy Kitzmiller
Just outside on Main Street, the only car on the block is being driven by middle school math teacher John Kitzmiller, who stops in front of the hotel so his wife, Tammy Kitzmiller, can get out into the mist.
She is here to relieve Quigley at the desk, for a 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. shift.
Kitzmiller said that Christmases have changed for her and John since she first met him in 1975 at Cragged Mountain Farm, a summer camp in Freedom, N.H.
It was a whirlwind romance. Kitzmiller, who was studying photography at the time, still remembers the first Christmas gift she gave him: a collage of black and white photographs of their time together at the farm.
It was thoughtful. It was creative, even artistic. But when John opened the present, during her first Christmas with his family in the Midwest, they only seemed to notice one photo: a picture of the two of them, stark naked, in a stream.
“Everyone was aghast,” she said.
They married three years later. Now, 37 years later, they’re together still.
These days, the presents are a bit more practical.
“We bought ourselves a brand new water heater,” she said.
“That’s marriage,” said Quigley.
7:45 a.m. Elaine and Ray Spisak
Less than a mile from the hotel, the road turns rough and uneven as it enters Chambers Village, a mobile home park off Sykes Mountain Avenue.
Elaine Spisak, 61, is bustling around her kitchen, making stuffed potatoes for Christmas dinner with her husband of 20 years, Ray Spisak, 75, who is sleeping in the bedroom.
The phone rings. It’s her sister, in West Haven, Conn., where Spisak used to work as a police officer. They exchange a few holiday greetings. They’ve been talking more in recent years, Spisak said. Her father died in 2014. Her mother died in May. Tough couple of years, she said.
Still, as the holiday season came to Chambers Village, they did their best to maintain some Christmas cheer.
Among the other Christmas decorations, a ceramic deer head hanging on the wall has candy canes dangling from its antlers, and a red Hershey Kiss wrapper molded onto its nose.
The Spisaks didn’t exchange presents this year, but bought each other simple greeting cards.
Their cat, Rocket, on the other hand, is getting a bonanza: a “Purina Pull ’n Play,” a new set of treats, some toy mice and a cat stocking.
Elaine Spisak has also bought pet stockings for many of the neighbors’ pets.
Two days ago, Ray Spisak learned his cancer had come back.
“What can you do?” she said, more than once.
The doctors have told him this could be his last Christmas.
And so, on Christmas Eve, over a traditional dinner of king crab legs, they began reviewing their options. Chemotherapy or not. To live at home or to go to the hospital.
“I just don’t want him to be suffering,” she said.
Ray feels the same — but about Elaine.
“I think he’s more worried about me,” she said.
In 1993, they came up to Vermont because she wanted to be where the air was cleaner, and the crime was less prevalent.
But you can’t move away from cancer.
“It seems like, in the paper, in the obituaries, the most common word isn’t ‘the’ anymore. It’s cancer,” she said.
In the meantime, Christmas goes on. Elaine is planning a filet mignon to go with the stuffed potatoes.
Ray loves sweets. There will be an ice cream cake, a chocolate cream pie. A pan of cookies sits on the counter, full with cookies made from friends and neighbors.
“We have everything we need,” she said.
8:45 a.m. Billy Roberts
Billy Roberts, a 60-year-old veteran, is quite a sight, carrying a black umbrella down Maple Street past the Hartford Town Hall, headed to a gas station in West Lebanon to see whether his lottery tickets will pay off this time.
Roberts is dressed all in red, from his head to his calves — the gray stubble of his broad face is topped by a Santa hat, and framed on the bottom with a red holiday tie that said “Ho! Ho! Ho!”
He likes to give the kids in the cars driving by a thrill, he said, wondering whether he is in fact Santa Claus.
Roberts, who has no driver’s license, walks nearly everywhere, though he did make it out of town on Tuesday to visit his sister.
She got him a Dremel tool and some other items to help him with his woodworking projects. A couple of years ago, he said, while living in a subsidized home with other veterans in Connecticut, he built a doll house, and gave it to another veteran, to be given as a gift to his daughter.
For the past month, he’s been working on a log cabin, with 1⁄ 8 inch dowels and Popsicle sticks. He’ll bring it to an event at the White River Junction VA where, he said, he’s won a couple of ribbons in the past. He plans to paint it red, white and blue.
“It’s going to say General Dempsey on it,” he said, “because General Dempsey’s going after the terrorists.”
9 a.m. Shawn Poirier
On Passumpsic Avenue in Wilder, Shawn Poirier parks in his driveway after having left to pick up his girlfriend, and his girlfriend’s son. He’s hosting his parents, and will pick up his two sons, 10 and 14, soon.
What do the boys want for Christmas? One snowboards and the other plays hockey, he said.
“They want snow.”
9:15 a.m. Jayden Lowery
It’s been a pretty good Christmas season for Jayden Lowery, 3, whose mother, Caitlin Lowery, works at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, and whose father, Troy, works as a FedEx driver.
A month ago, Jayden’s family grew to include a new sister, Annabelle, who hasn’t quite caught on to Christmas.
On Christmas Eve, he’s allowed to open one present. It turned out to be the Paw Patrol jammies, which he is now wearing.
This morning, in addition to a slew of presents that include a basketball hoop, there is no doubt what his favorite is. He can’t take his hands off his bicycle, complete with training wheels.
There is no doubt that it was Santa Claus who brought the presents, with his eight tiny reindeer, he said.
After all, the reindeer have eaten all the carrots, and Santa ate the cookies and milk.
9:45 a.m. Krysta Pratt
Krysta Pratt looks at the clock at the Station Market, a gas station that shares a roof with the China Moon restaurant and the Greyhound bus station on Sykes Mountain Avenue. The minute hand is moving as slowly as if she were waiting to open the best Christmas present in the world.
“I’m getting out in 15 minutes,” she said.
She’s excited to get home. She wants to give her 2-year-old son, Riley, his presents, including a stuffed teddy bear she got from Toys for Tots that is approximately three times his height.
For herself, she expects little.
“Maybe my fiance will make me an omelette,” she said. “That’s my favorite breakfast food.”
Family is important to Pratt. She said she moved to Massachusetts six years ago, but found that she had left too large a piece of herself behind in the Upper Valley. She came back just weeks ago.
Pratt processes a sale for a woman.
“Have a merry Christmas,” the woman said to her.
“I hope so,” said Pratt. The minute hand is moving more slowly than ever.
“I’m getting out in 13 minutes.”
9:55 a.m. Leland Geha
Pratt also rings up Heidi Geha, who has stopped in with her 7-year-old son, Leland, a first-grader at Dothan Brook School who is wearing camouflage print shirt and pants. Heidi Geha came in to pick up some scratch-off tickets for her brother, Joel Adams.
Leland is proud to announce that Santa Claus brought him a double-barreled shotgun — “Nerf,” interjected his mother — and a crossbow — “also Nerf,” she explained — and he also got another kind of gun, but he can’t remember the name of it.
Neither can Geha, although she can vouch that it, too, is of the Nerf variety.
On the morning of Christmas Eve, Geha said, Leland woke up at 3:30 a.m., mistakenly thinking it was Christmas morning.
“This morning he gave us a break,” she said. “He slept until 5.”
Of all the presents that Geha said Santa brought to Leland, she was most surprised to see his reaction to a large cardboard box.
“He made it into a fort,” she said. “He cut out windows and doors and duct taped the corners.”
10 a.m. Scott Neal
As the Rev. Scott Neal is delivering his Christmas sermon, the strong morning light streaming in through the stained glass windows has made the inside of St Paul’s Episcopal Church off Hartford Avenue glow — everywhere are flowers and evergreen boughs, wreaths and red ribbons. Neal spoke from behind the altar, his face framed by his white robe and six blazing candles; in front of him, a nativity is surrounded by red and white bands of poinsettias.
The pews in the nave are nearly empty — last night’s Christmas Eve service drew more than 100, but now, just seven faithful sit to hear what Neal said is the first Christmas sermon ever delivered, 1,629 years ago.
“For this day the ancient slavery is ended, the devil confounded, the demons take to flight, the power of death is broken, paradise is unlocked,” he said.
The women wore red sweaters and white turtlenecks with festive designs; the men mostly had on buttoned up shirts. They prayed for the church, and for families, and for children. They prayed for the hungry and the homeless and the destitute, and those who help them. They prayed for those who are lonely, alone, sick or sad.
Near the end of the service, they sang.
“God rest ye merry, gentlemen, let nothing you dismay,” they sang.
Their thin voices, bolstered by the piano and the reverberations of the walls, are somehow made more than the sum of their parts, and they finished strong.
“O tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy! O tidings of comfort and joy!”
At Christmastime in Hartford, each act of small kindness, and each Christmas greeting, has, too become more than the sum of its parts, bringing the community once more out of the mist-shrouded darkness, and into the light.
Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com or 603-727-3211.