Brickyard Christmas

Beyond the frozen Brickyard Pond, Gooseneck Girl baked bread pudding in crumbling outdoor ovens for the Pigman to deliver to the poor on Christmas Eve. Then, after more than 40 years of bringing this mouth-watering holiday treat to all the families who lived in the many shacks that surrounded the icy lake, these two genial recluses came to my grandmother’s house where I lived with a gentle request. They asked if I would be willing to help them bake and deliver their annual Christmas cheer? And so for six years, until I left my grandmother’s place forever, I served as Chief Assistant Baker and Elf for

the Pigman and Gooseneck Girl, the jolly Christmas Santas of my Brickyard home.

It was 1962 I remember best when morning flurries on Christmas Eve churned into a whirling blizzard. The worst holiday storm ever all the locals would later claim. The snow couldn’t lock down Gooseneck Girl who worked well past midnight baking more than 600 pounds of sugary goodness for the houses in Muskrat Heights from Eden Mill to Satan’s Lane. The wiry Pigman, dressed from tip to toe in piebald deer skins, and I took over, first by filling 300 cartons with the bread-pudding delight. Then after loading up the old fellow’s well-worn sleigh with all the goodies, we hitched the gigantic sled to a team of 8 good-sized Garden State porkers – Jerky, Guernsey, Yogi and Moose, Morris, Sussex, Sinatra and Bruce - trained since piglets to pull a thousand pounds across a snowy landscape.

Once underway, Pigman steered from the front. I, in my work-a-day cowboy hat, blue plaid jacket, camouflage wool pants, and army-surplus boots, rode in back jumping off every few yards to leave a yummy pudding container on each recipient’s stoop. The mighty storm roared all night long, reaching record

proportions by Christmas morning, and slowing our run through the freezing

darkness into a bleak daybreak. It wasn’t until half past ten on Christmas Day that our team finally made it back to Gooseneck Girl’s little shelter now enclosed by more than two feet of drifting snow reaching all the way up to

the refuge’s sagging sheet-rock roof. Gooseneck Girl was busy fixing holiday cookies when we arrived. She ordered us to sleep away our fatigue while she finished her latest Christmas delicacies.

I fell into a faraway slumber by the pot-bellied stove with visions of Christmas trees covered with tinsel and silver bells ringing “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose.” I awoke later that afternoon to find I was all alone. I waited a while to see if Gooseneck Girl and Pigman returned before hiking over to my Grandmother’s shack to taste the Christmas pudding that we had dropped off 12 hours or so before. I followed the same path Pigman, the hogs and I took the night before. By now, the snow had slowed but my trek across the icy pond covered with crystal, along the high-tension wire trail and up the wind-whipped deer path to the Heights took more than an hour with

the tracks of our dessert-filled sleigh lone evidence that I was traipsing through the thigh-high snow in the right direction. At last, when I opened the kitchen door I observed my Grandmother and Gooseneck Girl setting the kitchen table for a traditional Christmas dinner.

In a hickory rocker, Pigman dozed while Jerky, Guernsey, Yogi, Moose, Morris, Sussex, Sinatra and Bruce snorted and lolled around him on the tarpaper floor. In time, we all convened around the kitchen table to savor turkey, apples and plenty of dressing, but most of all I remember everyone - people and beasts - devouring extra desserts of creamy goodness on the merriest Christmas day ever at my Brickyard home.

Terry Scott Boykie