When I was a kid a morning like this with the fairly widespread frost that I saw just about everywhere on my drive in this morning would have our school teachers talking about squirrels scurrying around gathering twigs & leaves to line those huge nests high in the trees for warmth & looking for enough food to get them through the harshest part of the winter. I remember thinking that with my nine brothers & sisters it wasn't so much different than what my mom did to get all of us ready to face the winter ahead. The heavy winter clothes would come out in droves and the "hand me down" wars would begin! I never seemed to get exactly the coat or hat that I had my eyes on for a winter or two before. And I always ended up with the MITTENS!! The gloves were what I wanted....they looked so much better than those mittens! You could tell "guy gloves" but there was no such thing as "guy mittens". They could be hand me downs from one of my sisters for all anyone knew!! And the kids at school would remind you of that OFTEN! That must be why the 60's group The Guess Who sang "don't give me no hand me down world".... But not one of the 10 of us ever went to school cold...So the squirrels would get ready to keep warm for winter just like we did. A few things you don't think about as a kid though is how your mom & dad made sure the house was warm when you got home. In those days as the squirrels were scraping up everything they could find to keep warm, parents were scraping up every dime they could find to keep the house warm; we just either never knew it or never thought about it. Today though I think about it a lot. With the cost of heating oil & other fuels, keeping the home warm today may be even more difficult than during the days of my family "hand me down wars". Here's hoping that while the squirrels are rustling through leaves getting things ready to help them stay warm this winter all of us can rustle up ways to keep our homes warm too.
This recollection reminds me of when I was a kid with five brothers and sisters(plus myself).
ReplyDeleteOur house in Westbury, New York had what seemed to be a giant furnace that my father had to
occasionally curse at. We all cherished the warmth emanating from the baseboard heaters.
Although we had a fire place, I don't recall it ever being used. For me burning wood has always
seemed like a long outdated way of heating a house so when I moved here to Vermont I was
almost annoyed that my new wife insisted we buy, stack and burn wood in this thing called a
"wood stove". I've always been able to just "turn on" the heat. Even though it's cheaper to heat
with wood than with oil or electricity, I still find myself grumbling every year as I'm picking up piece
after piece in a newly dumped pile of wood just to stack it neatly undercover, just to pick it up
again when needed for the stove..........but we do stay nice and warm.