Unearthing a life.....

My mother standing out in the snow at her future in-law's farm, Othello, WA, ca 1931.

The old wooden water tank in Othello, WA. It always leaked, but in the winter, the leaks turned to giant icicles and then cascades of ice.
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ICE & SNOW
Amongst the old family pictures is a photo of my Dad standing up to his belly button in snow -- in Othello. This was practically an historic event and known as "the Big Snow of 192_"(?).
Snow was not a major part of winter in the Columbia Basin of the 1940’s. When it did come, it came as a surprise and we fell on it with great enthusiasm. First on ancient sleds from our parent’s childhoods and later on "new" sleds that showed up one Christmas morning, we coasted down the hill between our Smyrna home and the railroad tracks with flair and daring-do. When the snow failed to show up and the weather was cold enough, we pumped buckets of water and poured them down the hill to make an "ice slide" which was even more thrilling (and faster) than the snow.
Maggie Vining, the mail custodian, had to traverse this hill afoot in the wee hours of the morning. Maggie was about five feet tall and weighed a couple hundred pounds. Her balance and agility were thus impaired when it came to icy hills. I might add, for no particularly good reason at this point, that she had both the face and the disposition of an aggressive bulldog.
I’d better stop and explain about mail custodians: Smyrna’s mail went in and out on the eastbound/westbound Milwaukee passenger trains that went through Smyrna sometime between 1:30 and 3:30 AM (the middle of the night). The trains did not stop unless there were packages. The incoming mail was flung out the baggage car door in a heavy canvas bag that tumbled along the ground and was collected by Maggie Vining for delivery to the Post Office at 8:00 AM. She hung the outgoing mail sack from an arm on a metal stand beside the tracks and the baggage man grabbed it with a hook as the train rolled by.
Our icing of this hill pissed Maggie off and she’d throw the ashes from her wood stove on our hill during the night. Come morning, we would be back at the gunny-sack wrapped hand pump, laboring mightily to ice over her ashes.
A few years back, Norma had a nostalgia attack and went down to Smyrna and looked for that "hill". She reported back to Mom that the hill was gone. Disappeared. Vanished. Childhood sledding hills have a tendency to do that. Those that don’t disappear -- shrink. I’ve looked at that old hill myself. There is a discernible slope of maybe three feet drop over thirty feet. Like Norma, I recall it as being more like four times that height. Maybe someone brought in a bulldozer and scraped most of it away.
Norma’s "missing hill" dilemma tickled Mom because she had once done the same thing....gone back to look at a childhood sledding hill, only to find that it had been somehow flattened.
When we got a little older, we would drag our sleds up on Saddle Mountain and there created some truly breathtaking, high-speed slides. On one of them, we would have to purposely crash headlong into a sagebrush at the bottom -- to prevent our continuing on over a little bluff with a boulder strewn landing. These hills, at least, still exist just as we remember them.
At Smyrna School, snow always brought on a game of Fox and Geese. We’d start out with the usual giant spoked wheel made by sweeping the pathways with our "overshoes" moving side to side. Once the formal game became too boring, we would start adding and extended area of wandering paths until most of the school yard became the game board. A NOTE: All us redneck Crab Creek kids wore "overshoes".....black rubber overshoes with little "buckles". No slip-on rubbers. No zippered "galoshes".
When the weather got really cold -- like zero to maybe 20 degrees below zero -- we had this dare game. We’d gather around the iron pipe flagpole in front of the schoolhouse and apply our tongues to the pole. The goal was to get your tongue froze to the pole enough that it would stick there, but still be able to pull it loose without losing any skin off it. The timing was critical. I always went to far and ended up with a partially skinned tongue. And it seemed as though every time I developed this "tongue wound", my mother would have prepared a pot of acidic Campbell’s Tomato Soup for our lunch. Sting and Zing!
We’d play the same game at home on the iron pump handle. I’m pretty sure that on one such occasion, Mom had to rush out to the pump with a kettle of warm water and "melt" Neil’s tongue loose.
Ice skating on Crab Creek was another occasional winter pastime. I never mastered the art of ice skating. My ankles would bend beyond belief....or I would do the splits....or my legs would shoot forward and my skull would bounce off the ice. Like our first sleds, our first skates were parental hand-me-downs. They were oversized for our feet even though we wore multiple pairs of socks for bulk. There was usually a brisk bankside fire make with chunks of old creosote-soaked railroad ties. That was my domain -- huddled around the fire while others swooped and glided over the ice.
Dad was a good skater. He would streak along the creek, bent low with sweeping strides, until he disappeared around a bend. Then return -- more upright now -- skating backwards. He skated circles and figure-eights frontwards and backwards. He was good. I was frozen.
I did love to run on the ice in my shoes and slide for whatever distance I could in that way. Much safer process! And I loved the sound of the ice....the popping and cracking that always gave me a twinge of fear about falling through. To be honest, falling through the ice on Crab Creek would leave the victim standing thigh deep (maybe) in water....more likely ankle deep.
Mid-winter presented us with unique problems, especially during those times when the temperature plunged below zero, sometimes as far as twenty degrees below zero. We didn’t have to worry about our "pipes" freezing -- we had no pipes. But the hand pump out in the yard was kept wrapped in gunny sacks and old blankets. And the air vent into the root cellar was stuffed with rags and a light bulb kept burning to keep the jars of canned fruits and vegetables from freezing. The critical problem, however, was figuring out how to lower your bare butt onto a wooden outhouse seat in sub-zero weather. My "trick" was to grip the sides of the hole and try to sit balanced on my hands. Given the lack of options, this was probably a universally observed "trick", not just mine alone.