THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, November 22, 1994 TAG: 9411220053
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JANIE BRYANT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 253 lines
WHEN THE SUN goes down Wednesday night, the lights will come up at Coleman Nursery in Portsmouth, where everyone's favorite Christmas cards will spring to life.
But before guests arrive for the dress rehearsal of the 28th Christmas Wonderland, Judy Wyatt and other employees will go out to the brick-walled garden to do one more check of the Nativity scene.
It will be dusk by then and thousands of sparkling lights will look like someone pulled the heavens down on the trees and shrubs around the creche.
Wyatt will take one look and she'll cry. She knows this, because she has done it every year for the last 16.
She'll cry because it's beautiful. And she'll cry because she's so happy to have played a part.
And if she's honest, she'll shed some of those tears because she's just plain tired - six weeks of tired.
If there is one thing Floyd Twiford, co-owner of the nursery and mastermind of Wonderland, has learned over the years, it's that everything ``comes down a lot faster than it goes up.''
Christmas Wonderland came about in the mid-1960s when Twiford and A.J. ``Junie'' Lancaster went to the World's Fair in New York and saw people flocking to a Pepsi Cola exhibit of animated figures.
They decided something similar might draw people to the nursery during the slow months of November and December.
They started with one figure - a sleeping, snoring Santa.
Today, people come by the busloads to see the hundreds of animated figures and thousands of dazzling lights and holiday decorations that take over the 5 1/2-acre nursery at High Street and Cedar Lane from Thanksgiving to New Year's.
Before Thanksgiving arrives, everyone - employees, friends and relatives - have been pulled in on the act. But most of the work falls to Twiford; his daughter-in-law, Jackie Twiford; and Wyatt.
They start each year on Oct. 10, a day that this year felt closer to summer than Christmas.
But that was the day bags of fertilizer and potting soil and grass seed were moved out of the nursery's warehouse and the covers got pulled away from storage areas along the sides.
Behind those covers were about 650 figures protected under thick plastic bags - ghostly forms waiting for the season when Coleman's brings them to life once more.
A few days later, the circus at the end of the Snow Palace was in place.
A pint-sized Santa was in his booth hawking popcorn and cotton candy. Seals were spinning glittering balls, and a clown was pulling up and flipping himself over a bar.
But the rest of the warehouse was a testimony to the work still at hand.
Large toy soldiers lay straight backed in an open sleigh that had also become a catch-all for wreaths and other odds and ends.
The torso of the drummer in Santa's band was lying on top of a stack of boxes, and the rest of his body, still dressed in glittery gold pants, was sitting in a doll-size chair across the room.
``We're waiting for a new motor to come in,'' one worker explained.
Somewhere in the warehouse, a cricket was chirping.
Jackie Twiford was down on her knees on the concrete floor, stitching a rip under the tail of a large stuffed bear - a hemorrhoid operation, she called it.
Wyatt was taking a whisk broom to the apron of another bear.
``She looks pregnant,'' she said, adjusting the bear's apron. ``Sometimes I think they do multiply.''
Floyd Twiford wishes they would.
A few minutes later, he led the way down the warehouse to a tall stack of boxes, where this year's new figures were stored.
Like a child opening a Christmas present, he pulled out an ivory and gold baby-doll-size cherub for the new Nativity scene. She'll sit on a shelf in the creche that will make her look like she's hovering on a cloud.
``When we bought the first Nativity, the figures came to $3,500,'' he said. ``This year, it cost $12,000.''
So Twiford sticks to a budget and tries to add a few figures every year. And he never retires any.
If they stop moving, they become stationary figures in the background.
Moments later, Jackie and Judy are stapling remnants of cotton to the flooring near a treehouse in Teddy Bear Land.
They're waiting for a shipment of new cotton. Lots of cotton. About 540 pounds at a cost of $2,800.
Add that to nine 25-pound bags of flocking and 20 pounds of crystal flakes, and Coleman's will have another white christmas.
But for now they are using the snowy fluff salvaged from the year before. A Christmas season can be hard on the snowy surfaces of scenes, as well as the figures.
Sometimes children get a little carried away tossing pennies into scenes. But Twiford will never put up a sign telling them not to.
He doesn't like signs that say ``don't,'' his two helpers explain. It's too negative.
ON THE Tuesday before Halloween, most of the figures in the Snow Palace are in place.
Twiford is sitting at his work station - a card table close to Barney the Bear's Sled Factory. He's working on the motor of one of the Victorian children.
He finishes and plugs her in, then watches her like a doctor looking for symptoms. She swings her arm and he looks satisfied.
Nearby, Judy and Jackie are working on another figure, trying to spruce up her hairdo.
``I think their hair grows over the summer,'' Judy says.
Beyond the trio are two rows of figures lined up in the order of the scenes they will go in like pilgrims waiting for a journey.
Methodically, the trio will go over each one, a job that took longer this year because Twiford was able to find a source for new motors.
``A lot of them have little small motors, and after so many years, they just give out,'' Judy explained later.
The threesome are excited that so many of the figures will be restored this year.
Jackie takes clothes home and washes them, pulling pennies from pleats and bustles and adding new ribbons and other touches to bonnets and other accessories.
She even transformed the old Nativity scene's Mary into a Victorian figure.
``I gave her a hair cut, trimmed it and gave her some bangs,'' she said.
Mary's arms didn't work so good, so Jackie switched them with the arms on the old Joseph.
She took a burgundy velvet wrap off another figure and used old lace curtains and a floral cotton to make a long, flowing dress.
``I just pinned and sewed it, pretty much by looking at the other girls,'' she said. ``I tied some around her waist so she'd have that `poof' they all have.''
Then she set her up on the back of a sleigh behind another Victorian couple in a Currier and Ives-like scene. She showed her handiwork to Twiford, waiting for the sign of approval.
``She looks good sitting up there, but she'll always be Mary.'' he said.
THE SNOW has finally arrived.
Two weeks before opening night, Jackie and Judy have made their way into the main building of the nursery, the real heart of Christmas Wonderland.
There are no figures there yet - just Judy and Jackie perched precariously on a rolling scaffold, stapling snow drifts to beams below the ceilings.
They've been doing it for three days now, but there is no sign that they are tired of the chore. They take turns moving the scaffold along, laughing when they lose their balance.
Atop the beams are artistic displays of sweet gum tree branches that have been wrapped in clear tinsel to look as though they are covered in ice. Along with cotton, each branch and every yard of greenery gets a liberal dose of lights, snowflakes and icicles.
Across the hallway, Paul Schiffbauer, an artist who lives behind the nursery, is touching up the mural for the new raccoon village.
He's already touched up some of the figures that were showing signs of their 28 years.
Schiffbauer is one of many people who volunteer their time to make Christmas Wonderland a little better each year.
Two nights later, John Woodwort, a volunteer painter, put a fresh coat of paint on the nursery's doors.
``There's a lot of folks that would do just about anything for that man,'' Judy said of Twiford's Wonderland following.
Another volunteer, electrician Kevin Conroy, has come in to help iron out some of the mechanical glitches.
He's trying to get the two mice in Santa's Candle Factory to work. They're supposed to pulley up and down on a cord, dipping candles in pots of wax.
Later, Judy stands in front of Santa's bakery looking warily at an elf.
``He works for a while and then he stops,'' she said.
``He's union,'' the electrician said.
UP TO NOW, everyone has seemed calm and confident. But sometime over the weekend, Judy and Jackie started getting a case of nerves.
They came back and worked on the displays some more. Jackie stayed until 3 a.m. Monday.
``We're just getting a little bit worried,'' she admitted.
``We were waiting on that cotton, and we've taken more time to work on the figures,'' Judy said. ``This is the first year we've gone inside of them really and worked on them.''
Two weeks before opening night, the staple guns are going at a much more rapid pace.
Both Judy and Jackie have shimmied under a large sleigh to do the cotton, and they look a little frazzled as they crawl back out.
But while they're getting more nervous, Twiford is getting more excited.
He's watching a year's worth of visions finally unfold.
``I feel better every day now,'' he said. ``It's like it all comes together.''
He stands there in his bright green Coleman's jacket and his trademark red-plaid cap, with a twinkle in his eye.
The only things left to do, he says, ticking them off, are the Nativity, the lights across the front of the nursery and the gazebo, which will house the snow babies and the bowing Santa that greets people as they come in.
Many of the little details that dazzle people are already in place. Sawdust from where employees were sawing the railings for scenes has been sprinkled on the workbenches around Santa's workshop.
String has been placed in the hands of elves working in the shipping room, and red paint has been dripped on the snow where a bear is painting in the sled factory.
Twiford gazes happily at the huge grandfather clock in the middle of a large aisle of scenes.
He and his friend, James Mintz, spent the summer making the clock, which has openings for animated elves and an amplifier in its belly so people will be able to hear the tick-tocking and the chimes.
THE VOLUNTEER painter is back this night, too. It's been an annual tradition since he first showed up and said he wanted to help out after the New Year's Eve fire of 1982.
The fire nearly destroyed Christmas Wonderland, but an outpouring of donations helped to build it back. Twiford still has the list of contributors who gave about $22,000 to restore the holiday display.
``I guess the fire brought it home to a lot of people,'' Judy said of what Christmas Wonderland means to people. ``Children brought in pennies by the bagful. That really got to me.''
Twiford knows restoring Christmas Wonderland was personal for many people. They were restoring their own family's traditions.
``You see different types,'' he said. ``I've been in this area and seen them laughing and carrying on, and I've seen the same people walk outside where the Nativity is and cry.
``All those things affect you,'' he said.
He's seen children grow up and bring their children in.
He's come to know many of them and he chokes up when he tells about the woman who came in alone after years of coming in with her husband and family.
He asked her where she'd been, and she told him that her husband had died two years before and that it just wasn't the same without him.
The visitors average 400,000, and last year's guest book showed them signing in from several states, as well as Scotland and Germany.
About 85,000 children come on buses from day-care centers and schools. One day a year ago, they had 96 buses in one day.
``One of the best things you can see is one of these kids standing next to the rails just looking,'' Twiford says. ``That pays for all the hard work and everything.''
And the kids come in all ages.
Senior citizens arrive at a rate of about 15 busloads a day. They've already started calling for information from Richmond and Wilson, N.C.
``If I'd seen anything like this when I was a kid, I would have thought I'd died and gone to heaven,'' Twiford said, smiling.
And to some people, that kid is still there.
``He really loves it,'' said Jackie Twiford. ``Saturday I didn't go in, and I knew that mug was there messing with that stuff and setting it up. I went in there Saturday night and he had already placed the Victorian scene.
``It means a lot to him,'' she said. ``I mean, just Christmas in general and kids.
``There's a child in everybody, and I think no matter how old you get, you love Christmas.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color staff photos by MARK MITCHELL /
Above: Baby Jesus, surrounded by lights, is at the center of the
Nativity scene.
Left: Floyd Twiford, co-owner of Coleman's Nursery, repairs one of
the figures' motors.
Below: John Park Jr. decorates the entrance to the snow palace.
Staff photos by Mark Mitchell
Figures for the Christmas Wonderland at Coleman Nursery are wrapped
in plastic and stored until the next holiday season.
Judy Wyatt strings lights around the entrance to the snow palace.
She has helped erect the Wonderland for 16 years.
A huge new grandfather clock with openings for animated elves will
be on display this year.
by CNB