Thursday, December 18, 2014

Dreaming of a White Christmas


or, Who says it never snows in New Bern?

By John B. Green III

R.D. Baskervill pulling his children on a home-made sled, 400 block Middle Street, December 1958.  Smaller child is your blogger's future wife Jane Gibbs Baskervill, aged three.
For those of you who have moved here from the desolate and frozen wastes of the North and who maintain that it never really snows in New Bern, these photographs are offered as evidence to the contrary.  In the top photo, the man who appears to be a survivor of an ill-fated polar expedition is, in fact, my wife's father Robert D. Baskervill pulling his two children on a sled he made for the occasion.  A three-year-old Jane appears with her big brother Bob on the sled.  This photo was published on the front page of the New Bern Mirror, December 19, 1958.  The bottom photo is of my two-year-old self being held by my father John B. Green, Jr. in front of our house on Kennedy Avenue.

Your blogger, aged two, and his father John B. Green, Jr., Kennedy Avenue, December 1958.