{"id":72555,"date":"2019-12-26T12:00:49","date_gmt":"2019-12-26T10:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whisnews21.com\/?p=72555"},"modified":"2020-07-31T15:12:42","modified_gmt":"2020-07-31T15:12:42","slug":"jack-blanchards-column-the-christmas-town-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/2019\/12\/26\/jack-blanchards-column-the-christmas-town-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Jack Blanchard’s Column:\u00a0The Christmas Town"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"jackcolumn2016\"<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Jack Blanchard’s Column:\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>The Christmas Town<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/h2>\n

It was the day before Christmas.<\/strong>
\nWe were road tired and traveling westward through Illinois or Iowa…<\/strong>
\non our way to another show somewhere.<\/strong>
\nWe tried to cheer each other up,<\/strong>
\nand said we’d celebrate our Christmas at a later date.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The countryside looked like a Christmas card<\/strong>
\nthrough the windshield of our motor home.<\/strong>
\nFine dusty snow was starting to whirl around.<\/strong>
\nand the Interstate Highway was just about deserted.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It began snowing harder.<\/strong>
\nWe needed a place to pull in for the night,<\/strong>
\nbut we hadn’t seen anything open for miles.<\/strong>
\nWe started to get worried.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was getting dark,<\/strong>
\nand the wind was blowing the snow into drifts.<\/strong>
\nWe pulled off at the next exit,<\/strong>
\nbut there was no sign of life except for an old barn.<\/strong>
\nThere was a wooden sign over the door,<\/strong>
\nand Christmas lights were on inside.<\/strong>
\nIt turned out to be a little store<\/strong>
\nwith a few groceries, and some antiques for sale in the back.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The owner took us to a little room where they kept boots and snow shovels.<\/strong>
\nThat’s where we plugged in our electric line.<\/strong>
\nMisty made a good deal…<\/strong>
\nOne night, two dollars.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I dragged our small artificial Christmas tree out of the trunk.<\/strong>
\nShe had it trimmed and lit in about ten minutes.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We’d been on a long hard tour<\/strong>
\nand we didn’t have any presents for each other,<\/strong>
\nso we looked around at the antiques and things in the store.<\/strong>
\nWe picked out a few gifts,<\/strong>
\nbut we didn’t have any way to gift wrap them.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Two or three at a time people from the town came into the store,<\/strong>
\nstomping the snow off their shoes<\/strong>
\nand saying “Merry Christmas” to each other.<\/strong>
\nThey were smiling and friendly<\/strong>
\nand offered to take our gifts back to their homes and wrap them for us.<\/strong>
\nWhen they came back a while later our presents looked beautiful.<\/strong><\/p>\n

They brought along some cookies and eggnog,<\/strong>
\nand we had a little party with these unusual strangers.<\/strong>
\nWe wanted to cancel all our future bookings and live here.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the morning we woke up to snow covered cornfields<\/strong>
\nand a sparkling forest of winter trees.<\/strong>
\nAn old rusty plow and a wagon<\/strong>
\nwere half buried in the snow outside our window..<\/strong>
\nIt was a perfect Christmas.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We don’t even know the name of the town,<\/strong>
\nor which state it’s in.<\/strong>
\nAnd we haven’t been able to find it on any map.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We just think of it as our Christmas Town.<\/strong>
\nMaybe it’s in the twilight zone.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jack Blanchard<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\n

\"jackmistysunhat001\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jack Blanchard & Misty Morgan… <\/strong><\/p>\n

Home Page: http:\/\/www.jackandmisty.net<\/a> Awards: Grammy, Billboard, CMA, BMI, ASCAP. Mastering & restoration studio: 352-530-2068. \u00a0Email: jackandmisty@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Jack Blanchard,\u00a9 2007, 2012.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jack Blanchard’s Column:\u00a0The Christmas Town It was the day before Christmas. We were road tired and traveling westward through Illinois or Iowa… on our way to another show somewhere. We tried to cheer each other up, and said we’d celebrate our Christmas at a later date. The countryside looked like a Christmas card through the windshield of our motor home. Fine dusty snow was starting to whirl around. and the Interstate Highway was just about deserted. It began snowing harder. We needed a place to pull in for the night,<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":62260,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72555"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72555"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73614,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72555\/revisions\/73614"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}