Olde Fashioned Christmas decks the Mill with nostalgia

By ED RUNYAN

runyan@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

For Poland native Richard Griffin, his sister Nancy Pallazola and their spouses, Saturday’s Olde Fashioned Christmas at the Mill in Mill Creek Park was about nostalgia.

“Our dad used to bring us here as kids and take photos of everything, and I just wanted to come back,” Pallazola said as she stood looking down at the mill after her visit.

She and her husband, Victor, are from Rockport, Mass. Richard and Claire Griffin are from Alexandria, Va. “I graduated from Poland Seminary High School in 1959 and went to Miami [of Ohio] and lived all over,” Richard Griffin said.

The Griffins said they try to avoid Christmas events until after Thanksgiving, but the annual, free Lanterman’s Mill event is a nice way to start to enjoy the season.

“It’s the sights and sounds and the smells,” Claire said. “And the music,” Richard added.

The event, which continues today from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., is the “finale for the year” for the mill, said Carol Vigorito, recreation and education manager for Mill Creek Park.

It features crafts on each of the three floors of the mill, chestnuts roasting on an open fire and Christmas musical performances on two of the floors.

The 1845-era mill, restored in the early 1980s, provides an interesting and striking backdrop for the roughly 25-year-old event, as evidenced by the number of people taking pictures.

Of interest to many children was a pair of alpacas provided by Christine Blair of Leetonia, who owns the camel-looking animals at her Keeghan’s Corners farm and teaches biology in Southern Local School District.

She takes the alpaca fleece to a mill in Apple Creek, Ohio, that turns it into yarn that she sells. People frequently make scarves, socks and ponchos with it. She also has bees at her farm and sells the honey.

Blair encourages children and adults to touch the alpacas to learn what they feel like.

“They’re wooly,” one little girl said. “Even in the cracks they’re wooly.”

Said Blair, “It’s soft, soft, soft. The kids love these guys.” Blair brought two 1-year-old alpacas to the event Saturday, each standing about 5 feet tall, and said she planned to bring two more today.

Inside the mill, Linda

Szmara of Boardman was personalizing ornaments she had sold by carefully painting the name of the family buying it and including the year.

But her primary craft for many years has been animals painted on smooth, flat and rounded stones that she gathers at Lake Erie and along the banks of rivers and streams.

The flat stones mostly contain writings that have been painstakingly hand-painted.

The round stones are painted to become cats, mice and other animals.

She sometimes uses larger stones to paint chimpanzees or elephants, but those are harder because she has to hold the stone in one hand for several hours to paint them.

This is the only place she sells the stones, but starts in August to prepare for the event.

Santa Claus greeted a couple hundred children on Saturday, he said. Many want items based on Walt Disney’s “Frozen” movie or more traditional items such asLegos, yoyos, motor scooters or dinosaurs, he said.

“We’ll take the list and give it to the elves,” he said.

Vigorito said one of the best places to park for the event is the Idora lot, but there also is parking on West Newport Drive, and Mill Creek MetroParks police will help guide people.