A few days ago I was talking to Winona Woods about memories of growing up in the 1940s and 1950s, and especially memories of our country winter times. Like many kids around Pea Ridge, Garfield and Gateway, we were country kids, and by the time we were of school age we were used to having chores to do around the house and on the farm, including in the cold of winter. We were reminiscing about carrying in wood for the fire and carrying buckets of water which we had drawn from the well into the house. We always had our woodpile out back of the house, so it was often covered with snow and ice, and we would freeze our fingers while getting our armload of wood broken free and bundled in our arms, and then would gingerly make our way up the ice-coated back steps. Winona was telling of how as she carried her bucket of water from the well, the water wanted to slosh out and douse her pant legs and run down into her shoes, so she got back to the house with half a bucket of water and frozen feet and legs. Although it was fun to think back and talk about it, we were feeling blessed to be talking about it while we were sitting in our warm houses and speaking over telephones which we didn't have back then.
It is interesting to me how not only in the years ago, but today as well, we both delight in and suffer the cold and snow and ice of winter. Slogging through the snow to get hay to the cows was not much fun, and yet many of us delight in remembering doing so, and maybe sometimes in still doing so. I note the songs that have been written about the delights of the cold wintertime. "Sleigh bells ring, are you listening?! In the lane, snow is glistening!" That verse comes from "Walking In A Winter Wonderland." We might shiver through our chores on the farm, and then in the house we would sing about the Winter Wonderland. Or, how about Jingle Bells!? Just get a Bob-Tailed Bay, Two-forty for His Speed, Then Hitch him to an Open Sleigh, and, Crack! You'll take the lead! Back in those days, Bing Crosby was introducing his "I'm Dreaming of A White Christmas."
We suffer through winter's cold and ice, and at the same time we love the sights and sounds, and the fun that only snow and ice provide. For example, we loved sometimes having to stay home from school, when we would get out the sleds and spend much of the day sledding down the hillsides, now and then getting inside to warm up and drink hot chocolate. Then it was time to make a snowman! And we might make snow ice cream.
We remember our cold bedrooms. Some us had parents who used to recount how they slept under roofs with wooden shingles, and the blowing snow might get through the cracks between the shingles and drift down over their beds. I never had snow in my bedroom. Our house was pretty solid. But our bedrooms were usually unheated. And, since we are talking about times before electricity on the farms, there were no electric blankets. But, there were layers of blankets and quilts, and even feather beds. My grandma had a feather bed for me to sleep in when I visited her house. So, if we were poor, we still had a luxury or two.
The old farm houses were usually not insulated, and the windows were not tight, so the old houses could be "airish." Most were heated with wood-burning stoves or fireplaces. Most of the stoves and fireplaces lost much of the heat they generated up the chimney, but despite that fact, their warmth and coziness still rests comfortably in our memories. Even after we have become accustomed to central heat and natural gas or propane and abundant electricity, we may still wish for the radiant warmth and fragrance of the old wood stove. The old stoves could definitely warm the house, and when you gathered around you felt like you were absorbing that warmth all through your whole being. My wife Nancy tells of times when they would stop to visit her Grandpa Lewis Patterson on cold winter days, and he would be sitting on the front porch, with the front door open, airing out the house, because the old wood stove had the house too hot. In the old houses, the living room might be 85 degrees, but the kitchen would be 60 and the bedroom 40, and the outhouse 10 below.
If we had oak trees in the woods on our farms, then our heating fuel was free, except that we had to saw down the tree with a two-man crosscut saw, split it, saw it into firewood, stack it in the woodpile or woodshed, carry it into the firewood box in the house, find or split up some kindling, build the fire, and feed the fire with new wood at the right times. The more you burned, the warmer the house, but the more you burned the more you worked to provide the wood for burning. You often had to work hard out in the cold in order to be warm inside by the fire.
But then, there was that relaxing evening by the fire. The song says "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire, Jack Frost Nipping at My Nose!" We never seem to lose that feeling that life is good when we are gathered around the fire with family and loved ones. It's kind of strange to me, how we dread and suffer winter, and yet we enjoy it so.
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Editor's note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Editorial on 01/15/2014