Memories

Sometimes I get to thinking about when I was a kid and remembering some of the stupid things I did as a youngster. Like, oh, I must have been eight years old so that would have made it the winter of ’68. My sisters Willa and June, and my brothers Benny, Rick and Paul and I were outside playing when we decided we would go down to Ward road and ride our sleds down the big sand dune we had played on last summer. It was quite a walk down there in the summer, and it seemed longer when walking on an ice covered road. We were all bundled up in warm clothes, warm as long as we were moving. When you are sledding, that’s most of the time. By the time we reached the dune, about a mile and a half, we were warmed up and ready to go. We played on our sleds for maybe an hour or so, and then someone suggested that we take the back way home.
We had never been around the back way, but our neighbors had said that there was an Indian trail that wound around to the back of Dad’s farm that started where Ward road ended. Well, we were warm, and we had already seen what Ward road looked like going one way, so why didn’t we go the other way?
We did.
We started walking and slowly the road became narrower. We walked until the road became a two-track. We trudged until the brush closed in on both sides and finally we were on the Indian trail. It wound around trees and over streams and into a swamp. We had been doing fine, but becoming a bit worn down. My youngest brother, Paul, had a small hole in his red rubber boots, and the moist snow had been packing in until Paul started crying. We stopped, and Willa pulled off his boot and emptied it. We were all wearing our red rubber rain boots with a couple of pairs of socks for warmth. I recall my arches becoming painfully sore from walking on uneven surfaces without any real support. Paul was crying, and an empty boot didn’t seem to be good enough. So we all just sat around while Willa tried to warm Paul’s toes. We only stayed there for maybe fifteen minutes, but it was real difficult to get moving when he stopped crying. I was cold and stiff, and I think the feeling was mutual. We walked and walked and walked. Benny had been ahead of us trying to get home as fast as he could, but we caught up to him when the sole of his boot had all but ripped off. June tied her scarf around his foot to keep the sole on, but the snow kept collecting on the scarf and he could hardly walk. When he took the scarf off, the boot sole came off with it. There was nothing between his foot and the snow but two holey pair of dress socks. I gave him the best two socks I had on—they all had holes in them, but one would have a hole in the toe while the other had a hole in the heel. He put them both on the foot without a boot. My feet were freezing now, and I had only one pair of socks on. The rubber boots were rubbing against my ankle bones and everywhere the socks had holes. Before too long, I could barely walk.
June decided she was going to turn around and go back to Ward road. We were in the woods quite a ways, so we all figured that home was just beyond the next few trees, but it never was, so Willa told June to hoof it back the way we had come. Rick had been doing well all the way, but he didn’t object to sitting down and waiting for June to return. So we sat down.
Not too long after we did, Willa bounded up and shouted at us to get up and head back the way we had come. She sounded angry, but I think she sensed what might happen if we just sat there and waited and she got scared. Besides, there were no four-wheelers back then. The only way out was to walk it.
I grimaced with every step, while Benny was hopping whenever he grabbed a tree limb to support him. Paul was so cold he didn’t care if he moved again, so Willa had to carry him on her back. Rick walked ahead of us and when the trail was wide enough he or I walked alongside Benny to give him someone to lean on.
It seemed like June had been gone forever, and I began to lose hope that she had gotten home. Meanwhile, she had reached home and Dad and Mom and she had gotten into our red Plymouth and started to get us. Mom had grabbed a coat, but she hadn’t thought to change out of her slippers. When Dad got to the corner of Ward road the surface was too slick to make the turn and he slid into the ditch. Mom tried to rock the car out while Dad and June pushed, but it wouldn’t budge. So Dad sent June to get the ‘Little A’ tractor to pull the car out. June was nine years old at the time, but she was very capable of handling a tractor, even on an icy road.
It must have seemed like and eternity for Dad, because before June was even home, (and she could run like a deer) Dad had started out after her thinking that she couldn’t get the tractor started. It’s a good thing he did, because she forgot to grab the chain to pull the car, so they shot back to get it.
When they finally got back to where Mom was, I guess she was in a tizzy. Nothing was going fast enough. They got the car out, and headed down the road to find us. We were still a long way from where the Indian trail turned into a two-track, so Dad and Mom came in after us with June showing the way. Mom wasn’t even thinking about her feet, but Dad made her go back to the car. Slippers were not going to get her far in the snow.
So June and Dad trudged toward us, and we trudged toward them. Dad was almost running, but June started to tighten up and fell behind. Our group was barely moving when we spotted Dad in the distance. What a relief! June had made it. But we had a long way to go. Dad carried Benny on his back. I got my socks back, though the pain from the chafing eased only slightly, and when June reached us, she helped Willa carry Paul.
We were all sobbing. We had all been pushed to our limits. All of us except Rick, maybe. He started to jog when he saw Dad, and had been sitting in a warm car by the time the rest of us got there. Sobbing or not, Dad was MAD. He laid into Willa like I have never seen him do before or since. He called her every name in the book and kept asking her where her head was at and how could she be so stupid. Why had she led every one down a snowy Indian trail that was twelve miles out of the way? Did she? I don’t think so. We were all willing to try it, and none of us knew that it was anywhere near that far from our house. Still, being eleven, and the oldest, she should have known better…supposedly.