A Fairmont State graduate and Nicholas County High grad from Nettie, West Virginia who lives in Fairmont made a Christmas cookie that matches the Church Street Christmas light that I bought for the town.

Only Jennifer Frame and her friends call it “the Monongah Christmas Clam.”

And here I thought it was a pearl inside a seashell when I chose it for my childhood home on Church Street.

And that it was an allegory for Christ rising from the dead and his tomb, which seemed like an appropriate Christmas street light to me. I know that's getting way ahead of the manger beginning but I like to see the light at the end of the tunnel . . . or, in this case, on Church Street.

But young whippersnappers had more fun calling it the Monongah Christmas Clam.

Monica Shelosky Cochran, a Sts. Peter and Paul School graduate who attended Monongah High before graduating from North Marion in 1982, is a friend of Jennifer Frame who came up with the “Monongah Christmas Clam” moniker for my Christmas Street light on Church Street.

Fairmont State national acrobatics and tumbling legend Haley Cochran, in on the joke, is a daughter of Monica and 1982 North Marion grad Duane Cochran.
I tell you what, Jennifer: Make 2 dozen of those Christmas clam/pearl in a seashell cookies and deliver them to Susan Sanders on Thomas Street in Monongah. If Susan ships them to me I will send another check to the Charge of the Lights Brigade, as I call Susan’s Monongah Christmas Street Lights committee.

But the legend of Monongah Christmas lights cookies have to be in my Tallmadge, Ohio home before I leave for my annual Christmas Eve family party at my daughter’s house in Brunswick, Ohio.

Deal?