We lived on a county road with our nearest neighbors a mile away; the Lake Fork grocery store and post office three miles away, and our one room school house two miles down the road. County road equipment was nearly nonexistent, and what was available couldn’t begin to keep up with the snowstorms that came in one after the other. If the county crew was lucky, and got the roads plowed you could bet that within a few days another storm would move in and they would soon be impassable again. This happened over and over every winter. Sometimes after the roads were plowed, leaving a layer of ice and snow on them, Daddy would let us hooky bob behind the bob sleigh on our sleds to a nearby hill. At the top of the hill the sleds were unhooked and down the hill we would go, then Daddy would come down, and pull us up again.
I remember being snowed in for two weeks, unable to go to school. Shoveling snow was a daily chore. Usually, in between storms the temperature would drop below zero, then it was a struggle keeping the water pipes from freezing, and making sure the cattle had enough to eat, and keeping a hole chopped in the ice so they could get water. Even when the roads were plowed, trips to the store to get groceries or the mail were far and few between. My parents had planned well and worked hard so we had warm clothing, plenty of food to eat, and enough wood to last all winter.
I don’t know why my parents decided to move and especially in the dead of the winter, unless it
was so they would be ready to plant crops in the spring. I’m happy they did because it made my childhood, a dream come true.
No comments:
Post a Comment