My childhood required tremendous strength, endurance, perseverance and just plain old hard work that many of today’s children miss out on by growing up twenty to thirty years later. Sometimes I feel like a failure as a parent because my children never experienced some of the hard work I experienced. I will try to share some of those experiences with you.
Although some of my children have experienced what it is like to carry a single piece of wood from the wood pile to the backdoor, none have experienced the challenge of keeping a large stack of wood on the porch at all hours of the day and night to keep the family warm during those cold winter nights in Heber. It was my job for many years to help Dad cut the wood, haul it from the woods to our house and then pile it in the woodshed. I was responsible to split the wood and carry it arm load by arm load from the woodshed to the front porch, through the deep snow. I did not carry a single piece. I had to carry huge arm loads teetering above me as I staggered from the woodshed to the front porch. It took a stack of wood about 4ft X 4ft. X 2ft to keep the fire going through a single day. It was my job to replenish that wood pile on the porch each and every evening regardless of whether a blizzard was blowing or whether polar bears were roaming the town looking for a small person to eat or not. It often took many trips to accomplish my task.
In addition, I had the responsibility to milk the cow at least once each day. That involved getting the cold bucket and walking through the deep snow to the barn, providing feed for the cow and then sitting down in sub-zero weather to extract the stubborn milk from the cow’s udder. First, I had to wash off the teats with water. Then I had to chip the ice off the teats so that I could milk the cow. Each stream of warm milk put off sweet smelling steam as the milk landed in the bucket. By the time I had completed milking, my fingers and toes and nose and ears were all nearly frostbitten but never mind, I staggered back to the house through the snow carrying the precious milk for the sustenance of the family.
If I did the milking in the morning, I hardly had time to thaw out my extremities when I had to fight my way through the snow drifts to school, going uphill all the way. It is a miracle that I survived the ordeal, but I managed to get to school every morning on time and in good spirits to face the day. (I may have had a slight aroma of fresh milk or of cow manure, but I was not the only one.) Then at noon, it was home again through the snow to eat a morsel of lunch then back through the shoulder deep show to school for another exciting afternoon of instruction.
Sometimes it was also my job to deliver milk to other families who didn’t have milk cows. Then I would have to fight my way uphill through the drifts to their doors to deliver the milk to their starving children. Never fear, I was “Johnny on the spot” each and every morning. Neither snow nor sleet nor dark of night or early morning kept me from my assigned deliveries.
I hope as today’s children read this, they will hanker for the opportunity to experience some of the things I experienced when I was growing up. Obviously these activities were character building and I turned out none the worse for wear but it sure got tiresome walking through the snow, “uphill both ways!”