Brrrr!!!!

Well, the temperatures have not changed for the better -- We are still in the "Deep Freeze". The newspaper says we are to have high temperatures in the 20's and lows in the single digits for the remainder of the week. This seems to be the coldest winter this area has had for quite sometime.

When I was a kid I didn't really mind the cold and snow. There seemed to be lots of things to do. We looked forward to a "no school" day. There were outside chores to be done such as feeding chickens, hogs and milking the cow. The water would always freeze in the creek and we would have to break it to get drinking water for the animals. Since we had no running water in the house and the drinking water sat on the back porch we would bring it in at night to keep it from freezing.

Being outside was our idea of fun. We would bundle up in our coats, boggans, mittens, boots or galoshes and out we would go. We had some rabbit traps we would set to catch rabbits so with snow to our knees we would tromp to the places where we had set our traps. Sometimes we would have to clean off the snow from the top and around the door so the rabbits could get in.
We didn't realize with one or two feet of snow the rabbits wouldn't be going anywhere anyway.

Sometimes we would take the lid off the washing machine and use it for a sled. We didn't have a real sled - we had an old homemade one but it didn't work very well. On the washing machine lid we thought we were flying down the hill.

Another pasttime was playing checkers. We only had one or two toys to play with and no games. One day my grandpa made us a checker board. he took an old piece of cardboard and marked it off into squares and colored the squares with red and black crayons. Then he took some wooden spools and cut them apart and colored them red and black. Our checkers were different sizes but we didn't care - we learned to play checkers on that old piece of cardboard.
It was a real treat when Christmas came that year and underneath the tree was a checkerboard and real checkers. We were so proud.

I still like a good game of checkers. Peanut, are you up for a game. I bet I can still beat you!!!

That's it for today.