A Holiday Wish for Peace on Earth and Understanding... from the Back Street in Eaton!

Happy Holidays to all… as we celebrate in this crazy year of news, crazy weather, and crazy political events.  What more can one say!  Rather humorously the phrase  “Peace on Earth” and “Good will to Men” has become an impossible wish that even praying appears unable to solve considering the religion of violence which has overcome us all.

As I sit here on the quiet “Back Street” of old Eaton I am blessed in a way... its quiet, boring, everyday life, is a far cry from the world out there.  Oh yes there are problems here and there, but it is a country town quite capable of sustaining itself in a permanent state of suspension.  No terror acts, little crime, prayer groups, basketball at the church, gossip at the local mini-mart and small groups of people that keep the cemetery, church, fire department and museum going.

I do wonder if we here in America who have so much ever stop to consider how very fortunate even the poor are.  We have no war that is bombing us, destroying our communities, reducing our cities to ruble or turning our children’s lives into horror.  Yes children’s lives, that help form the hatred for the invaders or the enemies that are causing them so much pain. A learned hatred that passes onto fighting of more wars and reasons to for them to become warriors.

Reflecting on all this I hope for a moment that we all stop to consider what we have and offer a prayer or wish that all men on earth would one-day share in the richness of what we have.

To those amongst us who are the “have not’s”…take heart and continue on… look around and appreciate what you do have if only good friends or good family or strangers that care.  To the “haves” try not to flaunt it…money and gifts cannot buy happiness for your loved ones or for you.  That “Christmas Feeling”…is short lived.

I try to look back to a time when a child was born…a child who changed the world’s thinking… a child that advocated peace and understanding. 

There have been many of them…and we need many more.  Children that grew up and changed the world around them with peace and hopeful words not words of hatred, boasting or threatening…only words advocating peace and acceptance… truly great men and women like Martin Luther King, Mother Theresa, Gandhi, John the XXIII, and many more…and of course, the man whose birthday we celebrate this week Jesus Christ!

We need men and women who advocate on behalf of People... poor or rich, old or young, of this religion or that… ones who are pushing the one thought of Christmas… “Peace on Earth and Good Will to ALL Mankind.

A bit of history on John the XXIII.

The Holidays in the Old Town of Eaton and a "Thank You".

Morse House

First I would like to take the opportunity to thank everyone who donated cans to our museum can drive…. thanks…it was a success. Another thank-you to the helpers – Michele Kelly, Barb Keough, Jen Caloia, Chris Klein and a special thank you to Steve Brown for hosting us.

The season is upon us… yes that time of year.  I often get questions on what the “Holidays” would have been like in the old days of Eaton when it was just a fledgling community with log or stone buildings and no access to a shopping center... except perhaps traveling to market in Albany one hundred miles away!.

So I thought on the information I had in my archives and came up with this…Old Town Eaton as we call it was not far removed in tradition from its home base of Sherburne & Natick, Massachusetts.   In her book Old Town Folks author Harriet Beecher Stowe talks about the family of Deacon Badger. Badger was really a Bigelow who was her husbands Grandfather and her own relation via the Stowe family ties. This couple in essence is the Grandfather and Great Aunt or relative of a number of the Eaton settlers at that time including Joseph Morse’s wife Eunice Bigelow, the Morse’s and the Stowe’s and others.  The book gives us insight into the family life and “Holiday” baking.

From Old Town Folks

On holiday food: “The pie is an English institution, which, planted on American soil, forthwith ran rampant and burst forth into an untold variety of species. Not merely the old traditional mince pie, but a thousand strictly American seedlings from those main institutions to new uses. Pumpkin pies, cranberry pies, peach pies, huckleberry pies, cherry pies, green-currant pies, pear pies, plum and custard pies, apple pies, Marlborough-pudding pies, pies of fanciful flutings and architectural strips laid across and around and otherwise varied, assisted the boundless fertility of the mind, when once let loose in a given direction.”

Morse House Kitchen

The piece goes on to describe hundreds of pies put into an open back room that allowed them to freeze an be bought out throughout the holiday season and sometimes up until April.”

* I guess this inspired our traditional Thanksgiving Pie Sale.

One of Eaton’s great little stories is of a preacher who was so long winded that in the “Holiday Season”  the women at the service would be totally unnerved by his dragging the “Holiday” sermon on and on while their wood-fired ovens could be burning the food set for the holiday dinner.

If any of us can picture cooking the family feast over a wood fire or in a wood fired Brick oven?

 Since many of the residents were relations I am sure you can picture large family gatherings and a bill of fare that was gathered from the collective families larder. A long cry from today’s  shopping at Price Chopper or Wegman’s.

Memories of the past, the Old Town of Eaton Museum, and thoughts of the Holidays!

Words cannot describe the 20 plus years we (I) have spent down here trying to keep the history of Eaton alive. Time mixed with memories that are both good and bad. 

The original group of Neighbors for Historic Eaton formed out of the group that put on the Bicentennial for the Hamlet of Eaton… a thing that took great co-operation and time…and much effort.

The result of this is the Old Town of Eaton Museum and the Friends of the Old Town of Eaton Museum, a group now left in great part to new faces as the old ones have slipped from our grasp one by one.  How sad to look back, and yet how wonderful to have these memories.

I myself am not from Eaton or Madison County, and yet by that right alone was able to solicit help that bore no old grudge nor hard feelings… as do occur in small country towns.  I started by writing weekly updates on an old word processor loaned to me by Mike Curtis.  These articles were published in the Mid-York Weekly at a time when we had to take them to the paper’s office to get them put into print…a world of difference from  in today’s world of internet sending of both prose and pictures for publication.

We also… with the help of Bob Betz and myself put up the first webpage for Southern Madison County History called Our Old Town.  I did all the writing for that and took the pictures on old used computers and a cheap camera.  That progressed to covering 20 pus historic sites for Madison and Southern Onondaga County as Fall Festival History Weekend.

We have worked hard, and we need to continue in that vain to support the Eaton Museum.  This years pie sales were a great success and this years “Eaton Day” on Memorial Day Monday was an awesome opportunity to turn the whole Town of Eaton out to celebrate it vast history.

As Christmas closes in on us, although a season of hope and joy for many, let us remember the past struggles with happiness for their success…and let us remember with much sadness those who have passed on to become a piece of Eaton’s vast history.

This year coming …will bring us closer to the future…but with sad eyes we tend to in the holiday season to look back…This weeks passing of Ginny Chilson did that for me. 

***Please take the time to view the video below… put sound on… and revisit the Bicentennial in 1995 and view many of our neighbors, relations, and friends who have passed on!