(Faded clipping from the Sucker Ditch Sentinel, December 29, 1917)

The roads were wet and frozen on Christmas Eve, but much of the community made its way up the switch-back hill to see the annual Christmas program at Possum Scratch School. Sam Mercer managed to get his Model T. Ford sideways on the incline leading up to the hill and it took Ikie Robinson and his two prized chestnuts to hitch a chain to the bumper of the Ford and right its path to the school.

On the first Monday in December and weeks before the Christmas pageant, Miss Horton had taken her students out after lunch for a walk in the thicket and cutover behind the school. Each child carried his or her lunch bucket or Indian basket and was instructed to collect something to decorate the room and particularly the tree. The children brought back an assortment of acorns, hickory nuts, buckeyes, holly branches, bay leaves, hackberry branches, sweetgum balls, and other showy winter plants. Joe Snell even picked up a dried turtle shell, but that was quickly rejected by Miss Horton.

Scoot Mangum and Darrell Phillips had taken an axe and chopped down a six – foot cedar which they found in a thicket behind the school. On Tuesday, and after the tree was mounted. the students took turns stringing the tree with popcorn they had popped and crafted into garlands, using needle and thread, and paper trinkets that they had drawn and colored. They took the items they had collected the previous day and either used them as Christmas tree ornaments of decoration somewhere else in the room. Mr. Cutler, who runs the local general store and butcher shop, donated a package of 25 candy canes as well as a package of silver tinsel. Both items were opened and the candy canes and strings of tinsel draped from limbs on the tree.

The walls of the schoolhouse were lined with parents and grandparents by the time the program started. To thwart the cold outside, a pot-bellied stove had been lit earlier in the day and kept all warm.

All of Miss Horton’s sixteen students had a part in the program that followed. Millie Epps played Mary, Skeets Upon played Joseph, and the three Moore brothers–Les, Some, and Never played the parts of wise men. All of the other pupils filled in as angels. Rex Alton had brought in a small bale of hay for the manger scene. There were no sheep to be found, so John Graham loaned three of his blue-tick hounds to play that part and the hounds readily plopped down on the floor next to the warm stove.

All worked well until, late in the program when the hounds spotted an opossum in the persimmon tree outside the window of the schoolhouse. Led by Old Blue, the hounds immediately began to howl and raced for the window. One of the wise men, Lee Moore, I think, had the good sense to open the window and let the hounds bound out in pursuit of the opossum. The window was then closed. The program continued and the audience was asked to join in the singing of Silent Night. This completed, the children lined up beside the Christmas tree to receive a small bag of fruit, nuts, and candy from Miss Horton. “All’s well that ends well” or so said another wise man named William Shakespeare many years ago.

Authors Note:

A special thanks to my grandfather, John Graham and his hounds, Miss Lucy Horton and Ikie Robinson for coming to life again for this story at the school where my father attended, Union Ridge, but which was commonly known as Possum Scratch. It was located three miles northeast of Conehatta, in as erratic a route as a crow flies while under the influence of green persimmons.

Harold Graham, Ed.D., is a retired educator and genealogist. A native of Conehatta, he lives in Decatur.