WINTER BARK

Winter Bark

Although I grew up in the 1960’s and 70’s, my early days were somewhat like a 1930’s childhood.  My home was in central Wisconsin, in the sticks.  I grew up poor, partly due to my Dad’s love of beer, and also because of his lack of ambition.  We lived in a tar paper shack, built without a foundation.   Our little home had no insulation, cardboard walls on the inside, tar paper on the roof, and ghetto brick siding.  I was the youngest of six and we tried our dangdest to stay warm in the wintertime.

A Monarch wood cook stove (manufactured by the Malleable Iron Range Company from Beaver Dam, Wisconsin) was our main source of heat in the kitchen.  We also had a small airtight wood heater in the “living room” made of thin sheet metal.  When the tin stove had a good fire roaring in it, the stove along with the straight stove pipes going up through the roof, turned bright red.  It was a miracle that no one ever burned the house down.  

Neither of our stoves gave off much heat unless you stood beside them.  I compared them to a bonfire.  You stood close and warmed your front side, then turned around to warm your backside, then turned around and started over again.  We wore boots in the house and many layers to stay warm, and yet we were still cold.  

Some days my mother would open the wood cook stove oven door and we’d take turns sitting on a chair and putting our feet up on the door to soak up the heat.  Mom also took flat irons and warmed them on the stove top, then wrapped them in newspapers, and put them under the covers at the foot of our beds at night.

I don’t remember my father cutting much firewood but I do remember my young brothers always working at the task.  They used a bucksaw and an axe to cut wood off our eighty acres and hauled it up to the house on a sled.  They’d carry in armloads of firewood daily to keep the wood box next to the stove filled up.  

My mother and I would take a cardboard box outside with a piece of twine attached to it and drag it around the edge of the woods on the snow.  We’d fill the box with broken twigs (kindling) to use for starting fires in the stoves.

At bedtime we’d sleep under several blankets to keep snug.  I stuck my nose out from under the covers so I could breathe and my nose was cold to the touch.  I could often see my breath while in bed and I dreaded getting up in the mornings to get dressed in the cold.   The kerosene lamp kept a soft glow all night on the kitchen table.  Many mornings I changed from my flannel pajamas into my school clothes underneath the covers.

The house was even colder in the winters after my mother passed away from breast cancer.  No one bothered to fire up the stoves at night anymore.  On the coldest days of winter when I got up in the morning for school the water buckets in the kitchen were frozen solid.  The drinking dipper was stuck in a circle of ice.  On those mornings when there was no water to drink or wash up with, I couldn’t wait to get to school because I knew it would at least be warm there.

When the daylight grew longer and spring was on the horizon we gave a big sigh of relief.  God was good; we had survived another winter.  We welcomed the return of the robins, bits of green grass poking up through the melting snow, and the spring peepers.  It wouldn’t be long until we could take a dip in the nearby swimming hole, and scrub off our “winter bark”.

Reflecting on my childhood and the poor lifestyle that I grew up in makes me a much stronger person today.  I am filled with unbelievable appreciation for a warm home in wintertime and all that goes with it.  And that appreciation never leaves me.  

MOSS

A carpet of green, in a shady old woods…

Adorned with wet, shiny drops of dew,

Covering stumps and north sides of trees,

Nooks, crannies, humps, and low places.

Wet tiny mushrooms here and there,

Near last year’s acorns, missing their caps,

And smooth, wet stones cold to the touch,

All scattered among the green moss.