THIS IS about some of my best-ever Christmas gifts and stuff for last-minute shopping. Yes, I have written about many of these items before, but I am homesick and have little energy. Besides, after nearly 35 years with this New Hampshire news organization in one form or another, I’m second senior writer just under longtime friend and nature columnist of Swanzey, Stacey Cole. So I’ve earned the privilege.

My very best Christmas present ever was a J.C. Higgins bicycle. It was only the second skinny-tired, geared bicycle to appear in town — the high school principal’s son, Ricky Carr, owning the first. I remember my father appearing with a flat box which quickly disappeared. After midnight, I peered over the upstairs stairway landing. My dad, no mechanic, had gone next door to get neighbor Roger Favreau, a logging contractor, out of bed.

The two of them were sitting on the living room floor with a bottle of Four Roses whiskey and about a billion pieces of what was obviously a bike scattered all around them.

The bike was stored as a gift for my birthday on April 22, but I never got to ride it that day because it snowed a foot and a half.

The next best gift came in a year when some pressmen and I were putting in horrendous hours setting up a huge newspaper press in Lancaster. I was alone that year and absolutely dead tired. The newspaper crew sent me home with a box containing a huge lobster, numerous other treats and a bottle of Bourbon.

The third best gift came into the house this year, carried by longtime friend Kevin Shyne. It was a picaroon, used to pull three-foot firewood logs off a wood pile, or pick up one end of similar wood off the ground.

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And now some last-minute gifts (you still have time for these).

-- Northern Woodlands magazine is one of the very best magazines I get. No, I am not a director or on the regular staff. It’s extremely well-written and researched, and one of the best resource and outdoor recreation magazines in the country. Contact them in Corinth, Vt. at (802) 439-6292, or mail@northernwoodlands.org.

-- Hawkeye Hunting and Fishing News is a very readable and informative newspaper published in Milford. At least three members of the same family help put it out. It comes out monthly and the subscription price is $22. The publisher is Bill Balam and the editor is his son, Bill Jr. Contact information: 672-3836, or hawkeye@nhnews.biz.

-- In a different vein, a combination resident hunting and fishing license costs $46. It’s a great buy when divided by the huge number of enjoyment it offers. Information is at 271-3421 or 271-3422 or at nhfishandgame.com.

Thanks for being readers. Have a great Christmas and hope to see you in 2012.

John Harrigan’s column appears weekly in the New Hampshire Sunday News. His address is Box 39, Colebrook 03576. Email him at hooligan@ncia.net.