Growing

Growing
Part-1

In the fifties, I was just a boy. I enjoyed playing with my friends, in the little country town in rural northern Kentucky. I was reserved and shy as a child, with plenty of fascinating dreams.
Then I remember those cold winter days. When the ground was covered with the fallen snow. I would get my old sled, and get ready to go sleigh riding, and to keep my hands warm I would wear socks on my hands.
In my family there were ten kids, six boys, and four girls. My Dad had problems enough to feed us much less to buy us a pair of gloves. I do not remember ever going hungry at home.
Our home was filled with each others love and caring, for another. Mom, and Dad raised us to be God fearing people of the Lord.

I have always been a cold natured person, the cold wind makes me shiver. So with my sled in my hands I was off to have fun. As long as I could keep my hands dry, and out of the snow, they would stay warm. It would not take long for my feet to become numb from the cold weather.

Up the road a little piece, there was a field of hilly land, where a farmer always planted a garden there in the summer months. The plow left ridges on the ground, that surrounded the field. This made for a fast bumpy ride down the snowy hill on our sleds. There were usually 5 to 10 kids sledding at the same time. We had a great time going down the hill, but it was slow climbing back to the top, caring your sled.

On other days we would sleigh ride down the school house hill. A little elementary school sit on a hill with a road in front of it, that we rode down on our sleds. This hill would get real slick from cars traveling it, and packing the snow down. This made for a very fast ride, but it was dangerous, because at the bottom of the hill another road intersected it. We took turns being a guard at the bottom of the hill, to watch and warn about cars coming.

Many a time I took one of my younger brothers a ride on my sled. They enjoyed it a lot, and so did I. Yes, those cold snowy days usually meant school would be closed that day. The little elementary school was in a small country town. This meant the school buses had to travel the old country roads, snowy and slick. So they would cancel school rather than put the kids in danger.

When it snowed I knew there was a chance that school would be cancel for that day. I enjoyed sled riding with my friends, but I did not like the cold weather. Around my little home town there was not much to do to have fun, in the winter. So when school was canceled on those snowy days I had a ball.

Part-2

Eventually, the spring would come, and school would be out for the summer months. There was a number of things for me to do, to play. My friends and I would ride our bicycles all over the country side. There were usually at least five of us riding our bikes at a time.Sometimes one or two of the guys did not have a bike, then we would ride double.

On other summer days we would hike in the woods, or walk the country roads. Either way we always had a lot of fun, just being together.
Most of my friends were as poor materially as me. We considered that we were lucky to get a birthday gift, or a Christmas gift. But, that did not keep us from having a lot of fun.

Back then in the fifties, I became interested in cars and how their engine worked. My Dad had a lot of old cars, he never was able to afford a new one. So I would work on them when they broke down, and that was often. I really enjoyed working on them, but it was a dirty job, and I did not like that. Dad gave me an old Chevrolet to fool around with when I was about fourteen years old. After a couple of years a man my Dad knew came over to my house and asked if I wanted to trade the Chev for a Ford. He had an old blue1938 Ford, that he wanted to trade me. I did not drive the Ford to test it out, still we traded each other even.

I did not have drivers license at the time, but I liked the Ford better. The old Ford had mechanical brakes and you had to stand on them to stop the car. I started driving the old Ford around the neighborhood, and I was proud of it. My Dad, put a lot of trust in me and aloud me to drive it without a license. Sometimes I actually drove it to town, to pick up my girlfriend. Another bad thing about the Ford was its headlights. It did not have sealed beams, like the Chev I traded. Its head lights were the old reflector type, with a bulb in a reflector that cast off a light.

I had to drive with a lot of safety and caution, when I drove the Ford.

Kings