Sometimes, it would snow on the outskirts of Charlotte.
With the yearning of most Southern children for whom the sight is so rare, Angela and her two brothers and sister relished seeing frozen precipitation fall from the sky. If there was enough, and it stuck to the ground, that meant snowmen. That meant snowball fights. That meant a trip around the farm, huddled together atop the seat of their father’s horse-drawn sleigh.
Decades later, when Angela Weilbaecher thinks of Christmas and the fragile magic of childhood, that sleigh gleams at the forefront of her memories — runners glistening with melted snow, the whisper of slush rushing beneath them as they glide through a wooded path on the family farm.
Today, if ever her memory needs refreshing, she can look out the back window of her Atlanta home; there it sits — seat newly reupholstered, metal frame aglow with fresh paint.
Not too long ago, however, the sleigh was unrecognizable.
In September 2015, she unearthed it inside the barn on her family’s Charlotte-area farm. Nesting raccoons had ripped up the seat. The runners were rusted. The indiscriminate hand of time had tried to take away this family treasure. But, Weilbaecher is protective of her childhood memories and couldn’t let that happen.
“When I see the sled, it brings back memories … or even if I see images of Santa with a sled, I think about my father,” Weilbaecher said. “It was different, I think, growing up and actually having owned a sled.”
Upon rediscovering the horse-drawn vehicle, she felt compelled to get it fixed, “so I could share it with my kids and put it in my backyard and see it every year at Christmas with lights on it. That way, I could be reminded of my childhood.”
She shopped the idea around, and in June the Mad Stitchers, Chamblee upholsterers, agreed to restore the sleigh back to its former integrity. The act of doing so, Weilbaecher said, was a tribute to the memory of her father and an attempt at prolonging the sleigh’s life “so my kids could come get in it and take pictures, and if the neighborhood kids want to come get in it and take pictures, they can, too.”
She likely got that notion of sharing from her father, Jackie Tucker, who passed away in 2015. Weilbaecher said he loved sharing the sleigh with anybody who wanted to see it.
She describes her father as “a character from the Wild West who grew up playing cowboys and Indians.” Tucker wore a cowboy hat, or sometimes a Daniel Boone cap. He had a dry wit, Weilbaecher said. Growing up, she recalls her father collected used equipment. Specifically, he had a weakness for carriages and wagons.
A vacuum cleaner salesman by trade, he’d often travel to the rural areas near Charlotte and go door to door. Weilbaecher said he was “always very intrigued with what some of these people had in their barns.”
On one such occasion, he asked a local farmer if he had anything in his barn he wanted to sell. The farmer led Tucker out back and showed him the sleigh.
“My father went out there, saw it, fell in love with it, bought it and brought it home,” Weilbaecher said. “He was really excited. I remember him sharing the news with my mom. My mom was like ‘Yeah, great. Another wagon.’ Because he had, like, 10 already … but this one was different.”
Known as a cutter sleigh — a North American type of lightweight, horse-drawn vehicle — Weilbaecher said it’s now more than 100 years old.
As a little girl and, now, as a grown woman, she views it as a marvel.
“It was magical stepping into that sled and hearing bells sound to the gallop of the horse,” she said.
That’s why it had been so disheartening (bringing her to tears just talking about it) when she found it in tatters inside the family barn.
John Dutton, president of the Mad Stitchers, said he was honored to help restore the special family heirloom.
“I try to bring the uniqueness or the characteristics of what the project may be remembered as … so that families like Angela’s may pass it down,” Dutton said. “I wanted … to restore it as much as I could to what it originally looked like.”
Weilbaecher was thrilled with Dutton’s work, as was her mother, Young Oggie Tucker.
“There’s a lot of memories linked with that sled,” Weilbaecher’s mom said. “I’m so happy to keep it in the family. It’s a part of her daddy, and I think he’d be happy to see what she’s done.”
For Weilbaecher, using the sleigh to share the story of her father was a big part of the endeavor.
When she thinks back on those winters in Charlotte with her family, the recollections are crystal clear. It is her hope that the refurbished sleigh can help spark new memories.
“I wanted to give this old sled another chance, instead of just letting it rot in an old barn,” she said. “I wanted to use it to help in continuing my father’s legacy.”
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