Snowcream

Snowcream

When I was growing up on the farm, Winter was the worst time of the
year. Bleak and lonesome. My Sister and me would hope for snow. We
could at least slide down the levee on our cardboard boxes. Fight your
way back to the top and slide down again.

---If you kids worked as hard at working, as you do sliding down that
levee, we never would get behind Daddy said--- Finally when our
cardboard wouldn't take one more slide, we would make our way back to
the house.

It was real hard to thaw out, one side at a time. Snuggling up to that
coal stove your damp clothes would start to smoke, and stick to your
skin they got so hot. Then you would turn around and try to warm your
backside. Nothing ever got warm at the same time.

Mama would make snowcream for us if we could find a real clean drift of
snow for her. We would take the big dish pan out and bring it back at
least twice, with snow piled high. Raw eggs, sugar, and vanilla were
beaten together, then snow added, again and again until it was almost
like ice cream.

All this work of making snowcream was done by hand in an unheated
kitchen. It was so cold in there, you could see your breath coming out
your nose, ice on the inside and outside of the windows.

The doors to our house had gaps underneath them that a cat could crawl
under, not to the outside, but into each room. Every time you went
through into another room you heard---shut that door and kick that rug
under it--- My Sister and me would pull icicles off the eave of the
house, but Mama would catch us.--- Throw them down they'll make your
throat sore, how many times do I have to tell you that---

We had plenty of food, beans, potatoes, macaroni, the long kind with
the hole in the middle, you had to break them up to get them in the
pot. Tomato sauce went with the macaroni. This my Dad bought in small
cans, by the case for Winter. We didn't have much meat in Winter but
who needed meat?

In the Fall of the year smart farmers stocked up, a stand of flour, a
stand of lard, a big sack of sugar, salt, tea, and macaroni and tomato
sauce. These were staples and would get us through just fine. Mama
could fill you up on almost nothing, and it was good.

Spring thaw was awful, it got real muddy. We walked about half a mile
down a muddy road to catch the school bus. Your black and white saddle
oxfords, were all black and so were your white bobbi socks. You didn't
have extras to take a change with you.

It seamed like there was always something to set us apart from the
other kids, and it was never good. There was a lot of kids out there
worse off that we were. I began to really look around and see that when
I heard this saying from one of my teachers, --I cried because I had no
shoes, until I met a man who had no feet--- made me stop and think. See
I was listening.