Return of the Native

This harsh winter has brought out the old-timers’ refrain:  ‘Back when I was a kid, we knew what winter was.  We’ve been spoilt with these easy winters.  This is an old-fashioned winter.’  Followed by a satisfied ‘Harrumph’ and the Midwesterner’s perverse glee in recalling just how cold it got last night.  We love to complain about the weather.

I grew up in Thomson in the 50s and 60s, and the winters did seem longer and snowier, if not colder.  Around November the leaden skies descended and we didn’t see much sunshine until April.  We wore rubber boots with fake fur trim and either zippers or buckles.  When we went sledding down by the slough and in the old sandpit, our boots filled with snow and we were soaked through by the time we trudged home, where chili and hot cocoa awaited us.

We skated the rough backwater ice down by John Simpson’s, where the old Melon Grounds lie.  We often had to sweep the snow off the ice.  Occasionally Mom and Edith Cate accompanied us, but mostly we were left to ourselves the day long, until it was too cold and dark continue.  Dick Sloan was probably the bravest skater, jumping muskrat huts and sketching figure 8s.  I can personally attest that the ice wasn’t the best for practicing backwards skating.  After dark we could go down the street to Beth Williams’ house, where her dad had flooded the front yard.  Some winters the fire department was able to create a skating area by the old water tower, and sometimes we ventured out to Cate’s to skate on Johnson’s Creek.

Thomas Wolfe famously said you can never go home again, a Chinese proverb cautions that we never step in the same river twice.  Everything changes.  Some of us leave our geographic homes, others stay.  The common denominator is memory; we retell old stories, we wander back home.

We had a storybook childhood in our village.  That’s the way I remember it, and that’s the way it was.