Hurry Up!

This story I do not recall first hand. It was one of several stories Mom and Dad told often.

It appears that one Christmas Eve in the late 1930's a young boy was reluctant to go to bed. At that time there was living in the household a Mother, a Father, the young boy, a younger sister and a hired man. The young boy had been told that he had to be in bed before Santa would show up but apparently that was not overcoming his reluctance to get on with it.

All of a sudden there arose such a clatter, the sound of sleigh bells on the porch and the young boy was out of his tub and into bed as quick as a wink. He was still wet but he was in bed!

The hired man had snuck out of the house, gone to the barn, got a set of bells from the horse's harness and rung it right outside the window.

I do not know that the effect was long lasting.

Snow Banks

I don’t think it is just that things seemed bigger when we were children. I am very sure that we got more snow in those years. By mid winter the snow ploughs on the highways would have created such large banks that they would have to use “wings” in order to push back the tops of the banks so that there was room to push more snow from the next storm. The ledge created by the wings created wonderful new highways for children to walk on. Being maybe 30 inches above ground level they were often difficult to reach – but what an adventure. We were walking on top of the world on paths never before trod by man! Top that Star Trek! The illusion was that we were higher than the telephone wires – and we were – mind you the wires were on the top of fairly tall posts but they were down in the ditch - so we could see over them.These new paths were wonders but they were hard gained wonders. They would last only until the next interruption along the highway – a creek or a driveway where we would have to slide down to ground level walk, a few yards, then fight our way back up to the heights.