OK, that’s arguable, I’ll admit. Indeed, having seen at most a dozen or so Christmas displays in other communities over the years certainly doesn’t make me a qualified judge of such things. But as a former kid who, as a youngster around pre-school age was told one day during holiday ...

Last week I came across a picture from the early ‘70s of my cousins, my grandmother, her dog and her sister, my great aunt. There is a sad looking piece of garland hanging in the living room so I believe it must have been around Christmas. Or, quite possibly it is March or April; as with ...

The storm this week made it look like Christmas blanketing the hills of New Hampshire with anywhere from a foot to 4 feet of white, fluffy powder. Outdoor enthusiasts celebrated the mega storm, public works departments packed in the overtime, and others dug out over days, not hours. As the ...

Hello, good friends. First and foremost, I would like to wish each of you a wonderful holiday season. As we near the end of 2020, I think it makes sense to reflect for a moment on the year which we are soon to put in our rear-view mirror. I think it is fair to say that this has been a different ...

On Monday, we all headed to the Executive Council Chambers to participate in democracy and cast New Hampshire’s electoral votes. The process itself is mundane - involving a pile of paperwork, a few speeches, and a cloudy Monday morning, but the moment we cast four electoral votes – on ...

When cleaning out grandma’s attic, are you making decisions based on memories, just guessing an object’s value as you go? When it comes to your valuable objects, would you recognize the treasures from the trash? My quiz game, “Dumpster or No Dumpster” will help you to use your antiques ...

A version of the old saying might be appropriate right about now: “So much great material, so little time and space.” But is there any such thing as “too much” great material in the context of local history, from first-hand recollections to the precious snippets of family lore, passed ...

It’s that time of year, when people put aside their petty differences, relax their political posturing and take down their Halloween decorations (finally, I’m talking to you, house on the corner, that still had gauze ghosts hanging from every tree in your yard). Instead, we wrap our ...

Being inundated with Black Friday commercials and circulars caused me to have yet another flashback to the “60’s, prompting a “virtual” shopping trip in downtown Nashua. It’s only virtual in the sense that I am referencing an online Telegraph dated December 5, 1963 and imagining what ...

My older son can’t get enough of music. At the tender age of four, he’s always singing or playing his tambourine at home and asking me to put on music in the car, the louder the better. When I play a favorite track at home, whether Bach or BB King, he sticks his face in front of the speaker ...

Between freakishly weird toys, devilish Christmas carols and frigheningly uncomfortable holiday TV specials, someone is out to spook the kids during this most joyful of all joyous seasons. Grandma getting run over by a reindeer is the least of our worries, and yes, some tortured soul at a TV ...

Sometimes I get calls and emails – and yes, even a few snail-mails now and then – from folks whose memories were jogged a little by someone or something or somewhere I wrote about once upon a time in this space. Such was the case last week, when Nashua native and longtime resident Anne ...

Everyone from David Hasselhoff to Billy Idol has cashed in on the yuletide market, but for every “Charlie Brown Christmas” by the flawless Vince Guaraldi Trio, there is a “Jingle Bells,” barked by dogs. We can deal with ugly Christmas sweaters to a degree, but nobody wants to hear a ...

The Christmas decorations you recall from your childhood tend to influence how you decorate for the holiday as an adult. Your immediate family usually has the greatest impact, determining, for example, whether you buy a real tree or an artificial one. But sometimes, you develop a fondness for ...

Gone are the days of engaging in hand-to-hand combat to score the first 500-inch flat screen TV on Black Friday. No more Oklahoma land rush reenactments at midnight to get the newest video game consoles. Coronavirus has pretty much put the kibosh on heathen retail behavior. No one left ...

Finally. I have finally found the answer to a sort of personal mystery that surfaces every now and then for no other reason than to bug me for a few days, then go away, sort of like gout without the pronounced limp. I suppose I owe my old-Nashua friend and former Telegraph scribe Greg ...

Monday marks an especially meaningful anniversary for me. Early on December 7th, 1941, my future dad, Signalman Scott K. McIntyre, was puttering around just outside of Pearl Harbor on a converted World War I destroyer. He and his shipmates grumbled about having to get up early on a Sunday to ...