When I was a boy, my family lived on a small farm and there was never a problem finding activities in which to take part. Feeding animals was a daily requirement and fetching coal from the pile in the field near the house, fetching water from the spring house and even going to the cellar to get canned goods or root crops all required trips outside that were more than just a 30-second adventure. My parents did most of the heavy lifting and most of the work, but I did do some once in a while and was always pleased when they asked me to help do something with them. I wasn't always so pleased when I had to do something on my own.

I suppose our lifestyle was 'behind the times' by the standard of the day, but I didn't really know the difference. I'm sure it really wouldn't have mattered if I knew the difference or not.

During a recent visit with my mother, who happened to be in the hospital briefly, I thought of some of the things we used to do. It really doesn't seem like that long ago to me in one way, but in another I'm quite sure it was another lifetime lived by someone I barely remember.

I suppose all of our memories are like that, left to the ravages of time and distance, yet never really forgotten. The past becomes part of who we are, absorbed into the present.

I enjoyed spending some time with her that day—thankfully, everything was fine with her health-wise. Several family members were on hand to wish her well and while there she related the story of sending one of my three nieces to the cellar to fetch some canned food. Two of the three children refused to go and were punished in typical 'pick your own switch' fashion, while the third said, "Send me. I'll do it."

Now it might sound mean to refuse a trip to the cellar, but there were good reasons why folks might do so. I remember my own trips there and most of them weren't very pleasurable.

It was about 50 yards from the house and up a small hill to the little, mostly underground building that served as our main storehouse. It was the dark dwelling place of spiders and webs, scampering bugs and potatoes that had started sprouting in their bins by early spring. We even had a black snake visit it one time, but it didn't stay very long. It must have been scared of the dark.

The floor was dirt and the earthy smell of the room is still in my mind today. It was a place no child relished going, but it was necessary to go there to pick up the cans of pickles, beans, tomatoes and kraut and the root crops like potatoes, carrots, turnips and beets that pretty well made up our diet in the winters. Along with dried beans and stored apples (dried, stored whole or frozen), that was pretty much what we ate.

I was never one to enjoy pinto beans as a child, probably because that was a big part of our diet. I called them, "little brown beans," usually in a sentence that included words like "please don't make me eat those" or "not again."

The phrase "better than a snowball" doesn't mean much to you if you've never been relegated to eating wintry precipitation in an attempt to survive.

However, the only thing we did eat that was made from snow, 'snow cream' was one of my favorite treats. As I recall, we mixed snow with vanilla flavoring, eggs and something else and ate it like ice cream. Since store-bought ice cream is a thing that was hard to come by, our alternatives were just fine. We did have a churn thing that we used to make ice cream once in a while, but not very often. You had to have rock salt to make it work.

When making snow cream, no equipment is needed, but you never use the first snow, since it was purported to remove the germs from the air. These days a body would be hard pressed to find enough snow to make a batch. I don't think we've had a 'real' snow in three years or better. I consider a snow measurable when it gets deeper than eight inches. It's hard to get enough snow to make snow cream without at least half a foot. It's not easy making a snowman, either.

I've probably told this story about 100 times, but our house when I was a child had no indoor plumbing. We then installed a bathroom, two actually, and promptly sold the house. Then we moved into another old farmhouse with no plumbing and did the whole thing over again. I guess one gets acclimated to the life one lives, not really considering the plights of others or even the former circumstances of life that once were commonplace for everyone in these mountains.

These days we get out of our heated cars, insulated against wind, weather and even sound, and enter into the grocery store, likewise comfortable, to pick out whatever we'll be eating this week. It's so vastly different from the way things were just 30-some years ago that it baffles the mind, yet we all go about our daily tasks as if it's always been just like this.

I suppose I've slipped into my own version of the 'good life,' which means I really don't have to go outside if I don't want to. Therefore, when it turns cold, I just don't most of the time. Then, when the weather turns warm again, I try to catch up on all the things I need to get done.

In thinking back on things, I'm really sure that I would like for my own children to see how we lived back then for just a few weeks. Maybe then they could better appreciate the lives we all live today. Then again, they might find themselves joining me in wistfully remembering much simpler times as they grow older. It's hard to say.
 

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