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Winter Activities

 

"...And I grew up that way and I started going to school when I was about, oh, I think 6 years old. And we didn't have any rubbers to wear to school or any overshoes or rubber boots like you fellas have today. When I was a little feller I used to have to wear shanks - that was made out of the skin off of cattle's legs. I used to make them first when I was small out of deer's and then when we got big enough we made them out of small cattle that was a year old, and then as we got older they would be made out of two year old cattle's hind feet and we wore the shanks to school. And I lived about, oh, 700 yards from the schoolhouse and in the wintertime the weather was so bad - lots of big snowstorms - I used to have to crawl to school on my hands and knees over the drifts - the drifts was about, oh, 10 - 12 feet high in the road and you couldn't walk through them. So we'd have to take a lunch in our pocket and our books we'd tie them together and tie them on our back and then we'd crawl over these snowdrifts till we got down by the schoolhouse where it wasn't drifted any. At nighttimes why we go back and we'd have to crawl over them home.

Well, when we got home we all had chores to do, we each had our own chores. We'd start out by carrying the kindling wood and then we'd have to feed the chickens and feed the pigs and feed the calves - we always had a few calves around, we had cattle on the farm - and we'd feed these calves and give them their supper and then we'd go outdoors to play. And we used to have big snow drifts, oh around the house 12 feet high, and we'd take shovels and we'd dig big holes in these snow drifts and we'd have them for our camp where we live in. And then out along the fence where the snow wasn't blowing we'd cut big squares of snow out and lift them up and we'd make a great big fence. We'd called it a fort. Well then some would get on one side of the fort and some on the other and we'd make snowballs and throw them back at one another and whoever got hit why they was out of the game. The one that finished up and had the most men when we got through why we were the ones that won the game...."