DECATUR, Ill. (AP) - Every time you buy a Lonie Ginger-made Christmas wreath, you also take home good feelings and fond memories.
Ginger’s wreaths are sold at the Anderson Trees Christmas tree lot at the corner of North Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and East Pershing Road, and he guarantees each wreath is imbued with a sense joy and well-being.
Ginger is not trying to imply he’s immune to having a bad day but, when he has one, he won’t go near the wreath workshop in the basement of his Decatur home.
“No, it’s kind of like a spiritual thing,” the 54-year-old says. “You have to have the right mindset, like when an artist is painting something. If they are not in the right mood, the brush won’t flow the way they want it, and it’s the same way for my hands and wreath making. I have to be happy.”
He doesn’t get Grinched with too many off days, however. A cheerful soul by disposition, he ramps up wreath production in the weeks before Christmas. He sits right jolly, listening to festive tunes while imbibing healthy doses of Mountain Dew and, with trusty black Lab Jersey Girl by his side, weaving away from piles of cut evergreen tree branches.
The production area has the heady aroma of an enchanted forest as he clanks out the wreath-making art. The clanking comes from a special table, with built-in foot operated jaws, which clamp the wreath branches to premade metal forms.
It’s all an advanced far cry from the way he was originally taught to make them as a boy, but it’s that history that allows him to mine a rich vein of happy memories.
Ginger says he had gone to live with his late grandmother, Mabel “Mimi” Reid, in Pana in 1983 to keep her company after his grandfather had died. One day, she announced they were going to make a grave blanket to honor his memory, and weave it out of evergreen branches.
“She was part Indian, so she knew different things,” Ginger says. “But I had no idea what she was talking about. So she taught me how to weave with the branches, and it was just something neat. She also taught me how to cook, how to broast a chicken, how to can food.
“We were very, very close and I think of my grandmother a lot when I’m making wreaths. She was the best.”
His festive production repertoire includes wreaths in all shapes and sizes, along with grave blankets, crosses and candy canes. He decorates them with all kinds of goodies ranging from pine cones to faux poinsettias, elaborate bows (some illuminated with battery-powered lights) faux birds and whatever bits of jolly bling he thinks will work.
“You don’t want to do too much and make it look gaudy,” he warns. “It’s a judgment thing.”
Connie Anderson, who owns the Anderson Whispering Pines tree farm in Beardstown and runs the Anderson Trees lot in Decatur, says she used good judgment when she first made room for his wreath production.
That was 20 years ago when Ginger, a trained electrician, stopped by to buy a tree, fixed an electrical problem she was having and somehow the conversation drifted like snowflakes towards wreath making.
He had only been crafting them for friends and family up until then but, at her urging, decided to try branching into more commercial waters.
“Oh, his stuff sells good,” says Anderson, 53, who now supplies all his raw materials. “Why does it sell? Because he makes them really pretty, he doesn’t just slap a bow on. All his ornaments are glued nice and neat, and I think you’ve just got to be into making this type of thing to do it well.”
Which brings us back to Ginger, perched in his basement, the air heavy with pine aromas and Yuletide songs, clanking away while skipping down a happy and snowy Memory Lane as he weaves joy into the season for strangers.
“Christmastime,” he says with a smile. “I love it.”
___
Source: (Decatur) Herald and Review, https://bit.ly/2h3pqyf
___
Information from: Herald & Review, https://www.herald-review.com
Please read our comment policy before commenting.