(classical music playing)   (country music playing) ♪ I know a road where tomorrow is hiding ♪ ♪ A road where the birds sing the songs of yesterday ♪ ♪ A road where the river is quietly confiding ♪ ♪ The secrets of her journey she's learned along the way ♪ ♪ On the roads .... Mississippi Roads ♪ ♪ They're climbing up the hillsides ♪ ♪ And they're winding to the sea ♪ ♪ On the roads .... Mississippi Roads ♪ ♪ From the Delta to the ocean ♪ ♪ They're the only roads for me ♪ - Christmas.

To 100 different people, It means 100 different things.

Tonight on "Mississippi Roads," we'll be sampling some of the unique ways people around the state get ready for the holidays.

Hi, I'm Mike Morgan.

And our first stop will be a Christmas tree farm in McComb.

At the Old Capitol, we'll get a glimpse of old time Christmas as we help set up antique toys and decorations.

We' ll pause by winding Deer Creek in Leland, where the townspeople traditionally build beautiful lighted Christmas floats.

And you'll learn a recipe for a pound cake that's been a hit at Dunleith Mansion in Natchez.

We hear some holiday music by the madrigal singers from Mississippi State and visit the workshop of Moselle toymaker Fletcher Whitt.

Come with us for a holiday trip down Mississippi Roads.

McComb, a friendly place, especially at Christmas time and especially during the annual Christmas parade.

(marching band playing) After the parade is filled them with the spirit of the season, a lot of people drive out to John Balser's tree farm.

A photographer by profession, Balser harvested an idea his brother planted and started growing trees on their family farm.

It takes at least four years to produce a Christmas tree, and that's not as easy as you might think.

- To get into this business, you really need to join the Louisiana and Mississippi Christmas Tree Association, and they have men that are that are in the business that have plenty of experience, as well as professors from LSU and Mississippi State.

And they provide the Christmas trees for us at a good price.

They buy them.

This is the Virginia Pine and it is not indigenous to this area, so we have to treat it a little differently.

So what you have to do, you have to plant these, you have to keep the grass out by using herbicide, you have to mow them.

We have an insect called the Nantucket Kip Moth that will destroy these trees pretty rapidly.

So we have to spray the ground.

For the first year or two, you don't have to do too much to them except fertilize them and keep the grass out.

Beginning the third year, you have to start shearing them.

A tree, probably... a finished tree will probably have six shearings before it's ready.

That's three shearings a year and it has to be done.

You shape that tree.

You actually make a Christmas tree out of it and then as it grows, it gets a little rough again.

You cut those out and then eventually it begins to look like a Christmas tree.

- Now let's go with the Robbie and Kay Hamilton family of McComb as they try to find a tree that's just right for them.

- The four year old trees back over there.

So just go out, go out and find one.

- We're going to go looking.

- Go looking.

- See ya later.

- Okay, thank you.

♪ O Chrstmas tree, O Christmas tree ♪ ♪ How lovely are thy branches ♪   (song continues)   (motor whiring) - Well, we started six years ago.

We've really enjoyed it.

I don't do aerobics and I don't run and jog.

So I figured I'd take my energy and turn it into something a little more lucrative.

Of course I am, I guess you'd say, an old country boy anyway.

And I guess maybe this is a reflection on my childhood.

And I think my father, if he were living, and my mother, they'd be real pleased with what we're doing with the old farm.

Well, I think of someone in McComb named me The Christmas Tree Baron.

That's the most honor I've gotten.

(laughing) ♪♪ - Every December, the staff at Mississippi's Old Capitol Museum decks its halls with pine garlands, red bows, and plenty of history.

(unintelligible) It takes a week to prepare Christmas at the Old Capitol, an annual tradition.

During this season, the museum's attendance will double.

Its rotunda will be filled with the scent of spice balls hanging from the 25 foot cedar tree from Pontotoc County.

Collection curator Mary Llorens is entering Mississippi's attic.

Unlike your attic, every item here has been photographed and cataloged.

The Old Capitol, like any museum, only displays a small portion of its collection.

But the theme of Christmas affords the opportunity to exhibit a larger than usual number of artifacts.

- For our big tree in the rotunda, we put out our big toys and these are toys, which otherwise there would not be room to display, and we also put out what may look like a toy or a doll set of furniture.

It's a bedroom suite: a bed, a wash stand, and a dresser.

However, they are not actually toy furniture pieces.

They are sample furniture pieces, and they were used by Rice Furniture Company in Vicksburg in 1909.

One of our most popular toys underneath our big tree in the rotunda is the toy train.

It is large in scale and it's not electric.

It was donated by a Mississippian like most of our toys are.

- The museum also features trees that teach.

Exhibits Historian, Lucy Daoud.

- We have three Christmas trees downstairs that we decorate, and they are considered an exhibit rather than just part of the Christmas greenery and decorations.

And these were researched so that we could do the trees in three particular periods and be authentic about it.

The Christmas tree was not that popular, it was not around very much during the Antebellum times.

Only people who may have known about the German custom and who had started it.

The first reference we have in Mississippi is a diary in 1851.

A lady had done some reading about the German trees.

Everything had to be handmade, so we have quilling on there.

Quilling was a popular art of rolling paper.

We put papercup ornaments on there, along with baked goods.

This is a late Victorian tree.

Toys were put on the tree, so we have so many miniture doll furniture.

We have baked goods again, cookies, candy.

One of the really popular things was the papercut ornaments that are actually lithographs off of cards or stationery.

It was very popular to cut out these designs and decorate them, put them on paper, but tinsel around them and hang them on the tree.

The Depression Tree has electric lights on it.

One of the things that we were told by a lady who was a child during the Depression was they took gum balls and they painted them silver and they saved the silver foil off of their chewing gum wrappers all during the year so that they could wrap their gumballs in foil and hang those ornaments on the tree.

And then we have cotton batting on the edges of the tree that make it look like snow, cotton batting, that Mississippi person would have very easy access to.

- Once a year, like Santa's helpers, the staff takes the museum's smaller toys out from acid-free boxes and tissue paper.

Each toy is placed beneath its appropriate tree.

Only at the Old Capitol at Christmas time can you visit Possum Ridge, a typical 1930s Mississippi small town where the Panama Limited passes through on its way from New Orleans to Chicago.

Exhibit curator Cabot Taft is the model train engineer.

These models represent trains which have been important to generations of Mississippians.

Through all the Christmas preparations, it's the Old Capitol building itself, still looking toward Capitol Street at a changing... and unchanging Mississippi.

We paused in Leland to gaze into Deer Creek at the reflections of the beautiful lighted Christmas floats that brighten the holidays in this Delta town.

In Natchez, one can find Christmas celebrated in the deepest of Southern traditions here at Dunleith, one of the most recognized homes in the South, guests can enjoy an antebellum townhome setting.

Bed and breakfast is offered at this stately old mansion owned by the William Hines family.

And Christmas is celebrated with a beautiful tree in the foyer and the yummy smell of cakes and other goodies baking in the oven.

The renovated poultry house is now the breakfast room for overnight guests.

Ella May Green has been baking her special cakes, pies, and biscuits for many years, and she'd like to share her recipe for Dunleith Cake with us.

- Well, I got that when I was about 20 years old out of a paper, from the Jackson paper.

And I tried it several times and it wouldn't turn out.

So then I kept trying to find, and wrote it out right.

So I've been using it with that name Dunleith Cake.

I add more flavoring, and add more sugar, flour to it because the way it was, it was a little small cake.

It wouldn't make a full bundt pan cake.

But it's a beautiful cake.

If fits any kind of party, weddings, anything you like.

You can decorate it if you like.

You can leave it plain.

You can glaze it, any way you like.

It just turns out wonderful.

I always think when you bake something and it's real good, you don't mind baking them.

Never bake nothing that can't anybody enjoy, you know.

- To make her Dunleith Cake, Ella uses three cups all purpose flour.

Three cups of sugar.

Five eggs.

One stick of butter.

One stick of margarine, One heaping teaspoon of baking powder, One cup of milk, One tablespoon of rum flavoring and one tablespoon of coconut flavoring.

Cream the sugar, butter and margarine.

Add the eggs, flour, baking powder, milk, rum, and coconut flavoring.

Mix until smooth.

Spray the bundt pan with shortening.

Then grease with shortening and flour.

Pour in the batter evenly and it's ready for the oven.

Bake at 350 degrees for one hour.

We'll give an address at the end of this program, if you would like to write for a copy of this recipe.

- I mean, you should never open your door on you stove when you're baking it, bake it one hour and never wash your pan with soapy water and never try to bake it when the weather looks bad, because it always falls.

- The key to this recipe is the syrup, which is poured into the cake hot out of the oven.

Boil one cup of water and one cup of sugar for 15 minutes, then add one tablespoon of almond flavoring and pour into the cake.

But a word of caution: Ella claims to be the only one who can make this cake taste and look as delicious as it is.

- I have several others, but I think this one takes the cake of all of them.

- Now, let's go to Starkville to sit in on a rehearsal of the Mississippi State University madrigal singers as they prepare for one of their many public performances of medieval Christmas carols.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ - Just outside of Moselle, one of Santa's helpers turns out toy guns, spinning tops and trains hand-finished from wood to be enjoyed by many children at Christmas tTme.

Fletcher Witt, with assistance from his wife, Betty, has been making wooden toys of all types for many years.

He uses several different kinds of wood.

Pine is one of his favorites.

- My father was a woodworker many years and years ago.

He was a cabinet maker, general carpenter.

And I really didn't get into it at the age that most people probably would if I would follow in his footsteps, you know, 18, 19, 20, 25 years old.

But somewhere along the line, about 1973, 1974, I got real interested and it just kind of dominoed 1, 2, 4, 8, 16.

And from there, until today's operation, mainly for the Christmas season.

I have the, what we call a folding Christmas tree.

And then, of course, the usual everybody likes a train for Christmas.

We always have the trains for Christmas.

We also make the candle holder, which is a five candle holder.

You might explain that candle holder.

- It can be used as an Advent Wreath.

The churches quite often use them.

You know, they start lighting the candles four weeks before Christmas.

Each Sunday has a different significance, and then the center candle is for Christmas Day.

- Although guns and trains are the kids' favorites, one of Mr. Witt's special toys is The Walking Duck.

After he has outlined the patterns for the body, and the wheels for the feet on a plank of wood, he carefully cuts them out on a band saw.

Toys were not the first things that Fletcher made from wood.

- The first toy was a train.

And really, the toys, I think, were maybe maybe secondary because in the beginning I had built two or three pieces of furniture, and all of a sudden I decided that I could not build furniture because of the limited space.

And I think probably that's it.

Plus the fact that I like working with smaller pieces of wood and smaller items as opposed to chair, furniture, or dresser, if you please.

-Witt is just as concerned with the quality in his toys as if he were making fine furniture.

After the duck has been cut out on the band saw, the main body is shaped along all sides to give it a rounded edge.

The wheels receive the same treatment.

Holes are then drilled in the wheels and the main body.

The different parts are then inspected for imperfections.

The handle ball is made and drilled for connection to the holder.

A small groove is then cut into the wheels of the duck for the rubber feet.

After attaching eyes and nose, the duck is painted, this is where it says that most of the toys were made out of necessity because of children, grandchildren, relatives and friends who wanted them.

Fletcher displays the toys at arts and crafts shows around the state and tells people his toys are constructed from wood, but made with love.

We paused for a while in the town of Star, a fitting Christmas stop.

The history books say the four letter name was chosen simply because it was easy to spell.

This has been the last show for this season, but we'll be back again soon for more trips down Mississippi Roads.

And if you know of an interesting person, place or event you'd like us to visit, send your suggestions to Mississippi Roads, Mississippi ETV, P.O.

Drawer 1101, Jackson 39215.

Merry Christmas, and thank you for joining us!