'Tis the season for reminiscing

With the recent snow and cold weather, it is beginning to look like Christmas. After winters of having hardly any snow fall, we have gotten an old fashion snow. Still, winter has not arrived and will not until later this month. Most of the experts are predicting a mild winter. Maybe so, but I bet those people in the St. Louis area who were without electricity are not considering this to be mild weather.

Someone said that Butler had a record snow of 18 inches, but I question that. One of the deepest snows that I have ever seen came in the month of April. It came fast and shut down traffic on Highway 52. Some of the residents who lived near the highway had unexpected overnight guests. It snowed deep in April, but it also melted fast. I do not know what year that was, most likely in the '40s, but I remember it.

There is something about this time of the year that we begin to think about some of the events in the past and about people we knew. Perhaps those are the old days, but they do not seem like the old days to me. I always thought of the old days being in the early 1900s. I suspect that what is considered as the old days may depend on the stage of life of the one doing the considering.

Since many readers are interested in events and things when I was growing up, it seemed only appropriate to do some reminiscing of childhood and youth. Even though it is nearing Christmas, these thoughts are not any certain time of the year.

The other day, I thought about the scar on my right side. I had not thought about it for sometime and it was difficult to locate. It is a scar about three inches long. When the wound was made that caused this scar, three inches was a large portion of my side. My body has grown, but not the scar. The injury happened when I was about three or four-years-old? I do kind of remember the event.

It was during milking time and the cows were out in the area east of the milk barn and I was out walking among them. One of the cows turns her head suddenly and slashed me in the side with her horn. Mom often said that it was not an intentional thing on the cow's part, but she happened to do it as I was walking past her.

My side was cut open and bleeding. These days, a person would be taken to the emergency room, but this was during the '30s. Mom picked me up and took me to the neighbors and Letha Hellwig helped mom to treat me and applied bandages.

I have related to you before that I remember the first day of school. There was no kindergarten in those days, and we did not go to school until the first grade. I had on new overalls and I was thrilled to be going to school. As I stood on the front porch of Black School, a one-room school, an older boy asked me if I was in the first grade and I told him I was.

Overalls were worn for several years. At some time, I asked my parents if I could wear pants instead of overalls. Our neighbor boy, Allan Davis was older and he was not wearing overalls. After I started wearing jeans, I never wore overalls again. There was a period of time when farm boys did wear overalls, like their dads. I did not like wearing long underwear and at some time, perhaps when I started to high school, I stopped wearing them, not ever wearing them again. There might be times that I should wear longjohns, but I haven't.

Back when I was in grade school, school was not called off because of a snow storm. During that first year of school, I was sick much of the time and missed school. One snowy morning, I was not able to go to school because of illness.

I am not sure if it was my first year or not. Anyway, the other kids and teacher were being hauled to school on a hay wagon. They had not gotten very far when they went into a ditch and the jolt threw all of them off into the snow.

It was not long before they were back to our school warming up and drying off. That was one of the memories that Arleta Hellwig talked about and laughed about during her entire life.

I was born during the great depression. Everybody was poor but we did not know it. We had an old house when I was little, during my first winter which I will admit I do not remember I was kept off of the floor because it was too cold. As a result I did not walk until I was 14 months old.

When I was little, I wore overshoes in the house so my feet would not get too cold. Later years, it seemed like my feet would get cold rather rapidly. Mom often wondered if my feet were frost biten in that old cold house.

One of our granddaughters often says, "I am bored." This is something that many kids say these days.

My thoughts are that I do not think that was in my vocabulary when I was a kid. I may not have had anything to do, but I would do something.

We did not have electricity or many of the gadgets they have. I often rode a stick horse.

There are other things I could relate to you, but that is enough reminiscing for now.