NOT INFREQUENTLY one hears
old timers say, 'There are no winters now such as there were in my boyhood
days." Those words express my own feelings but statisticians tell us that
the difference is more imaginary than real; that the days of extreme cold
and heavy snow-falls impress themselves deeper than others on our
memories. However I do know that when the sleigh-bells began to be heard
in early winter, they were generally quite common until the spring
freshets announced the fact that winter had, "brokenup." We endured or
enjoyed, as the case might be, the severe cold when the thermometer at the
post-office indicated sub-zero. The ice crops on our ponds and lakes was
generally satisfactory. In Montreal and Burlington, Vermont, the
street-cars ran on sleds instead of wheels during the winter.
When visited by icy blasts from the Polar regions,
it was exhilarating to see the ruddy faces of boys and men of the
countryside, the men with ice laden moustaches and whiskers rubbing their
ears, swinging their arms and stomping their feet to restore circulation
to tingling toes and fingers.
The red-hot stoves in school-houses and other
public places were gluttons for coal and chunks of maple wood but they
were good friends of boys and men. They were frequently completely
surrounded by lively, healthy happy folks chaffing each other and swapping
yams as to the extremity of the cold spell and speculating as to the
probabilities of its long continuance, which we boys hoped would be
forever.
During severe spells the frost on windows assumed
fantastic shapes, completely obscuring the view outside. Long, thick
icicles, the result of intermittent freezes and thaws, hung like grim
specters to the eaves boughs, and occasionally they snapped off as a
result in changes of temperature and fell to the ground with a crash. Woe
betide the boy or girl who is cracked on the head by a mammoth icicle
falling from an eaves bough at the wrong time.
When the warming sun of early spring began to melt
the snow in the mountains, the brooks and rivers became swollen to their
brims, not infrequently submerging the meadow land, and during the first
cold night every spot in the village capable of holding water became a
skating rink. We could find ponds suitable for skating in yards and
gardens and in the ditches along the roadside; in fact almost anywhere.
One might wonder as to how rapscallions could find
pleasure in wading in mud puddles or on the edges of brooks swollen by the
melting snows of the mountains. Well, to begin with, one must have
imagination. To the rapscallions of my New England Valley, brooks were not
brooks, they were great rivers, the Niagara, the Amazon, the Mississippi
or whatever we pleased. The mud puddles were lakes of enormous
proportions; and both rivers and lakes afforded us opportunities to try
out our new rubber boots.
The deafening roar of Roaring Brook was a reminder
of the fact that the spring floods had come. Grandmother used to regale us
with stories of the great flood of a year long passed, when Roaring Brook
and Otter Creek had entered into a conspiracy to drown all the folks in
our valley, good, bad and indifferent, before some resourceful Yankee Noah
could spring up and go into the ark building business and thereby thwart
the purpose of the unholy alliance. The conspiracy, because of failure on
the part of the conspirators to pull together, failed as everything fails
when the co-operative spirit breaks down. Just what was the matter, I do
not profess to know; grandmother never told us. It is possible that
boisterous Roaring Brook wanted to monopolize all the honors and that the
customary peaceful Otter Creek would not stand for it and kept on carrying
everything that Roaring Brook and all of its ilk had to offer down to Lake
Champlain and dumping it unceremoniously into that capacious reservoir.
However, folks in our valley were not oblivious of the rowdy nature of
Roaring Brook nor of the fact that it wished them no good.
We were always ready for the coming of spring with
its lush green grass, sweet scented lilacs, apple blossoms, trailing
arbutus, dandelions and veritable lakes of yellow cowslips, with their
broad green leaves. The dandelions and cowslips, properly cooked, provided
our tables with a welcome change, and, though we knew nothing of such
things at that time, replenished our supply of vitamins, which had been
depleted during the six months of ice and snow. Provided with shoe knives
and pans for the dandelions and water pails for the cowslips, we went
gaily forth for the harvest of edible things.
Even before the dandelions and cowslips had sprung
up from lithe cold earth, water-cress was green along the flowing brooks.
Parsnips, planted in the fall and imprisoned in their icy tomb during the
winter, managed somehow to gather nourishment from the cold soil and were
all the sweeter for their hibernation. Horse-radish roots which had been
planted by grandfather years ago in an out-of-the-way corner of the
garden, were waiting for the spade before the frost was out of the ground.
Thrifty New England housewives made their own soap
for clothes and dishwashing, floor-scrubbing and other cleaning purposes.
Soap making was a homely ceremony which we boys looked forward to. It had
its place in the domestic economy. It saved considerable expenditure and
cost nothing except planning and labor. No wonder that New England pots
and pans were clean and that floors shone.
When the bright warm days began to come regularly,
the soap making ceremony began. Grandfather would place a barrel on a big
flat stone which had for generations been the center of soap making rites,
fill the barrel with wood ashes, then pour water in on top of them,
letting it seep down through the ashes into a drain cut in the flat stone
which led into the big iron kettle placed on the ground below. When the
water had all run through it would be baled back into the barrel to course
its way through again. Each time it would become redder and stronger and
when it was strong enough to float an egg, it was ready to receive the
pans and pails of fat which had accumulated during the winter. Vigorous
stirring of the lye and fat mixture resulted in the emergence of the good,
clean soft. soap. It was brown in color and soft in texture; of strong but
not unpleasant odor; it could be lifted by hand from the container in
quantities to suit.
One of the joys of springtime were the long walks
which George Sabin and I took after supper. When the roads were muddy, the
railroad provided the only dependable footing. George, who had learned to
smoke early in life, used to puff his pipe vigorously as he told me of the
wonderful contrivances he had read of in Popular Mechanics and elsewhere.
He was a big boy and he had an enormous head with no vacant space in it.
He also was given to reminiscing and he always
embellished his reminiscences with a wealth of detail which made them seem
very plausible indeed. For instance, in telling the story of his fall from
the flat roof of the oxbow factory, he explained that it was the result of
his losing his grip on the nut of a large bolt on the roof to which he had
been clinging while trying to clamber over the cornice from a stationary
ladder. Nothing could have been more natural; his fingers slipped off the
nut and down he came. Fortunately he was able to get his feet out of the
way and to land in a sitting posture on a ten foot beam which happened to
be lying, providentially, on the ground. It was as easy as landing with a
parachute. When I remarked that it probably knocked the breath out of him,
he nonchalantly answered that it probably would have had he not held his
breath. When I reminded him that his tactics were just the reverse of that
of cats under similar circumstances, he answered, "Exactly. Those fool
cats will get their legs broken sometime."
The rush of business in the tin shop during the
winter was the result of the accumulated orders for sap buckets to be used
in maple sugar making in the spring. George could turn out an amazing
number of tin sap buckets during the winter months; his output ran to
seven or eight hundred all made by hand; he kept up his school work as
well. The tin shop turned out good work but no time was lost in either
orderliness or cleanliness. The floor was carpeted with scraps of tin and
other debris. George used to say that his father calculated on sweeping
the floor and cleaning up about once every ten years but that they usually
were too busy.
During the summer months Sunday School picnics
were held in the not too far distant woods, and, upon rare occasions,
railway excursions were planned to points of interest far, far away. They
were memorable affairs. Once we visited potteries at Bennington, and once,
glory of glories, we went to Lake Bomoseen near Hydeville, twenty-five
miles from home, where a little steam yacht had been engaged to take the
most venturesome out on the expanse of water in order that they might gain
first-hand information as to what seafaring life was like and thus become
more appreciative of the sacrifices which were being made by our
missionaries in the South Sea Islands and other distant parts.
The baskets provided by the ladies for picnics and
excursions were capacious and stuffed with toothsome sandwiches and
scrumptious chocolate and cocoanut cake, even cream puffs at times.
In the winter oyster suppers and New England
dinners took the place of the festivals, picnics and excursions as money
makers to support the less alluring activities of the church. Occasionally
the ladies of the Congregational church used to get up what they called a
"hard times dinner." George Sabin, who thought much about his food and
could appraise a dinner as well as anyone, said that times were hard but
he thought they were not that hard-referring to the dinner. However, hard
times dinners were money makers for the church as the ladies could
contribute almost everything. We rapscallions considered dinners, picnics,
excursions, etc., far more important as Christianizing influences than
foreign missions or any other questionable enterprises.
The changing affairs of community life demanded
our attention. When old Mr. Clark the blacksmith died, a younger man,
hailing from I know not where, arrived in town to continue his business.
His name was Peck. His bulging muscles provoked our admiration and
prepared our minds for the leadership which he promptly assumed.
Mr. Peck had a battle-scarred, veteran fighting
cock which he exhibited with pardonable pride and offered to match him
against any bird in the county. Up to that time, it had never occurred to
me that our old rooster whom I had named Methuselah, might, in his
advanced years, become a famous fighter and thus reflect credit both on
grandfather and myself.
The matter was soon arranged and another boy and I
captured Methuselah and took him to Peck's for the encounter. Not having
any available money for a purse, it was agreed that the fight should be
for glory and that the reward should be the championship of Rutland
County, the title which Peck's rooster was supposed to possess.
When we saw the two opponents together, I would
have bet a million dollars on grandfather's representative if I had
possessed that much money. Methuselah was inches taller and heavier by
far. His plume was of variegated colors. Though his ancestry was unknown,
he had the characteristics of a Plymouth Rock, for'd his midscuppers and
of a Buff Cochen aft. When Methuselah got his first look at Peck's
spindle-shanked and dissolute bird, he emitted a guttural sound like a
laugh which seemed to say, "So this is what I have got to lick! Well, turn
me loose."
After a few minutes of fighting, Peck's rooster
began sagging in the knees and Methuselah gave him what seemed to be his
coup de grace. Peck's rooster laid himself down and passed out, or at
least seemed to pass out. Methuselah crowed and flapped his wings. I
yelled to Peck, "your old spindleshanks is dead," to which Peck replied,
"not by a long shot. He is only taking a little nap; didn't you see him
wink at me? That means that he will wake up in a minute or two and give
your old bird the trimming of his life."
Peck's prognostication proved to be more accurate
than mine. Three times Peck's bird laid himself out apparently dead to the
world; after each round there seemed nothing left but the funeral
ceremony. Methuselah indulged in the customary wing spreading and crowing
jubilation, in which we joined in spirit, but three times the corpse came
to life and started in fighting where he had left off; he didn't seem to
know anything else. His third resurrection was discouraging to Methuselah
but he plucked up courage and killed the game cock once more, only to see
him arise again undaunted.
At this point, Methuselah began to be a bit groggy
and to luff a bit to the sou-west. He seemed to have lost interest in the
fight and seemed to be trying to fix his mind on more agreeable matters.
If the truth must be made known, Methuselah was in
reality a "passafist;" he might be drafted, as he had been, for
belligerent purposes but he never would have enlisted voluntarily. Peck's
game cock may have sized Methuselah up as that kind of a soldier; at any
rate he won but it seemed to me that he did so under false pretenses,
rising from the dead so many times. Methuselah was an honest rooster and
he could not stand for anything crooked so all we could claim for him was
the honor of being runner-up for the championship of the county.
I never told grandfather how near his rooster came
to being champion; in fact, I concluded not to mention the affair to him
at all. Several weeks passed before Methuselah got back to normal so that
he could overcome the habit of veering sou-west when he approached
grandfather for his meed of corn.
Peck was not the only newcomer to brighten life in
our community. One whose name I cannot recall, entered a class in our
school. His outstanding characteristic was his mastery of expletives
- particularly those of a profane order. His profanity flowed trippingly
from his tongue and he had not been with us two days before he launched a
campaign to get up a baseball team. His formula was very simple; we must
have a blankety-blank good pitcher, a blankety-blank good catcher and a
blankety-blank good everything right down the line, and that would make a
blankety-blank good baseball team.
Not knowing anything about it ourselves and our blankety-blank newcomer
seeming to know all about it, we left
it
to him but he quit school and the town
before a week had passed without a blankety-blank word about where he was
going.
