Drive - A Memoir 22nd Installment
his
boots at the light switch and quite often would hit the switch just
right and shut off the light, as he did tonight.
“Nighty
night.”
“I
was thinking,” I started.
“You
think too much in my opinion,” Russ said.
“This
new house is sure nice with central heat,” I mused.
“Go
to sleep.”
“Snug!”
“What!”
patience wasn't Russell's long suit.
“Nothing,”
I said. I was thinking of the old farm house in the winter, and how
miserable it had been when it was below zero, like cold, cold, cold.
There had been no heat, only the potbelly wood stove in the main room
and the flat top wood burning stove in the kitchen – nothing in our
room, Linda’s room, or the parent’s room. I remember listening to
Edith and Vernon discuss building a new home with central heat, a
modern kitchen with an electric stove, and most of all indoor
plumbing, while I was playing under a nearby free standing storage
cabinet. It was a good place to fool around but an even better place
to eavesdrop on parental discussions. Indoor plumbing! I was dreaming
of doing my ones and twos inside the house, and how we could tip over
and demolish the old ‘two–holer’ outhouse and bury the hole. I
hoped the Old Man would let us do it; sort of closure for all the
discomfort in the cold, the stink in the heat, and the fear wandering
out to do potty in the dark. For now we were living in a building
that had only walls, a roof, and a ‘fire up your own stove’ for
heat. I remember if we had a cup of water in our room, it would be
frozen in the morning; the only way to keep warm was to pile on all
the blankets – “stack the quilts deep and try to sleep!” In the
mornings, the Old Man would have the potbelly going, and Edith would
be firing up the flat top kitchen stove. We would listen for the
'clank' in the stove door closing, then one of us would yell, “Three,
two, one, go!” We’d jump out from under the pile of blankets and
hightail it to the stove where we’d left our clothes the night
before, dress in a flash and all the time try to stay as close to the
stove as we dared without touching it.
“Get
water,” Edith would call. Of course, the house had no running water
and no indoor plumbing. We had a two–holer outhouse way out back we
called the ‘thunder
box’
in the summer and the ‘shiver
shanty’
in the winter. You don't sit long when it’s below zero. Also, you
had to make sure your butt wasn’t wet or you could be frozen to the
seat until spring. We’d shrug on our heaviest coats, don our
stocking caps and pull on our gloves even though we
500 more words tomorrow
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