ORANGE BEACH, Alabama — In Christmases past in the early days of Orange Beach, Ella Callaway Fleming remembers good times and good food.

Born Ella Rose Hutchinson on Christmas Eve of 1926, Ella grew up in the 1930s living at Fort Morgan where her father was a Morse code radio operator for United Fruit Co. From the late 1940s on she lived and raised a family in Orange Beach.

Her first Christmas after marrying Ray Callaway of Orange Beach in October of 1945 was at his parents’ home, which was just east of the intersection of Alabama 161 and Canal Road.

On a warm autumn morning at her home at the end of a boat canal in east Orange Beach, her eyes glistened as she recalled years of past holidays. Birds flitted among the falling leaves just outside the wall of windows facing the water and her hands waved in the air as she relived those days.

Miss Ella Callaway Fleming tells a good story:

“His first Christmas after we were married I worked and I was going to get off at noon on Christmas Eve and my mother was perfectly happy to have Christmas in New Orleans,” she said. “He wanted to come to Orange Beach for Christmas. There was another fellow on the same ship as him when his ship came into New Orleans on Christmas Eve.

“So Ray Walker, Ray Callaway and I got into this car and left New Orleans to come back to Orange Beach. They were paving the road from the canal to Orange Beach. It had rained and mud came up in the car. That’s how terrible wet it was.”

Electricity was sparse in those days as the visitors rolled into Orange Beach late at night on Ella’s 19^th birthday.

“Well, you know how dark it was in Orange Beach?” she continued. “Back then it was dark. So when we got into Orange Beach we stopped at his mother’s house. And my husband said ‘Ray Walker you take our car and go on down to your brother’s house.’ He was going to stay with Bob Walker, Bobby Walker’s daddy.

“When we knocked on the door his mother came to the door and looked out there and said ‘Who’s there?’ This is so funny. And Ray said ‘it’s Ray and Ella.’ She said ‘what are you doing here?’ And I thought ‘what have we gotten into?’”

Turns out, it was the old proverbial “no room in the inn” situation for the travelers from New Orleans. Not to worry; plenty of Callaway family members lived nearby.

“He said ‘Mom, we’ve come to visit you for Christmas,.’” Ella said. “She said ‘I don’t know where you’ll sleep.’ One of the other sons had come home from the service. It was right after the war and a lot of them had come home.

“At that time Ray had a sister that lived right across the street. He had two sisters that lived over there. So she came over and told her, ‘momma don’t worry about it, I’ll take Ray and Ella over to my house.’

“So we slept, had a big dinner and we got in the little car and we went back to New Orleans. And I was never so glad to see New Orleans in my life.”

During the years, one of the staples on the Callaway table for all holidays was fried oysters.

“Ray’s daddy, always before Christmas or Thanksgiving, went and got oysters,” Ella said. “We went to Navy Cove and got oysters. He’d fill a skiff and tow it back down to his waterfront property, leave the skiff with the oysters in the water. Anytime you wanted oysters, you went down there and you opened them and ate them.

“We always had fried oysters for Christmas because Ray’s daddy felt we should. Man, I quit that tradition. We’re not going to have fried oysters for Christmas, but we did it for years because we had all the oysters we wanted.”

Christmases at Fort Morgan during the Depression were sparse, compared to how people celebrate now. But they were happy.

“My daddy and them made us feel very special,” Ella said. “We had that big house we would make popcorn, we’d make fried doughnuts, we would play games like checkers.

“We always got a good set of clothes. It was so cold in our houses the boys wore flannel-lined blue jeans. Everybody got a pair of blue jeans and a flannel shirt and a jacket, maybe a pair of shoes. Clothes; practical things. And then they’d get their favorite toy.”

One of the most special gifts lasted through the winter.

“I can remember after Christmas, every year they gave us books like ‘Swiss Family Robinson,’” she said. “January is a dark month, so every night my daddy would read to us a chapter or two out of a book.”

Whether it was in the 1930s or 1940s Ella wanted to make sure one point came across quite clearly about the times and the people.

“The good thing about back when people didn’t have much money, we helped each other,” she recalled. “No one had fantastic Christmas back then. If you had one bicycle you’d share it. I can remember when we were kids, one pair of skates, my two brothers and me, the three of us shared them.”