Freezin' to Death

Winters always seemed to be colder when I was a child. In part, I’m sure,  because we had no good way of keeping warm. The wood-burning fire places kept us warm as long as we stood directly in front of them, and even then we needed to keep turning around to keep the other side warm.

There was also the problem of being able to dress warm when we went outside. My family had very few warm clothing, especially the children. We were kept inside on the really cold days.

 One cold winter, when I was maybe five or six years old, my brother, Reuben, came over to tell us his oldest daughter, Jewel, had slipped and fallen on the ice on her way to school. She had apparently broken her leg.

The next morning it was still very, very, cold, but my parents decided we should pay my brother’s family a visit and see for ourselves how Jewel was doing.

My Dad hitched up the team to our wagon. We bundled up as best we could and loaded in the wagon. Mom wrapped my sister and me up with an extra layer of quilts. We proceeded to travel the four or five miles from our house to theirs.

We reached our destination without incident, but when I started to get out of the wagon, I couldn’t feel my feet. Dad said they were frozen. Once we got inside Mom got a pan of warm water for me to soak my feet in until they thawed.

Jewel did okay with her broken leg. She learned to use crutches just fine. The only problem she had was going from being a skinny little girl to being a little too chubby.