Christmas 2013 . . . December 13

This 10-inch papier-mache white-coated Santa was a gift to my mother as a little girl for Christmas.    It most certainly was bought at the High Amana (Iowa) General Store.   Her Onkel Willie and Tante Christine ran the store, and as we had relatives in Germany, they  always carried a large variety of special Christmas and Easter items from Germany for sale in the early 1900s, and this even continued on into the 1980s.   One year the German relatives sent my mother a large box of Erzgebirge wooden toys when she was a young child, which I remember always being displayed for Christmas at our house when my sister and I were growing up.   That, I suppose, formed the basis for my fascination with toys from the Erzgebirge.   It wasn't until about five years ago  that I found my great great grandfather Wendler was born in the Erzgebirge in Niederschlemma, and I had driven through the little village before not knowing at the time that he was born there.