Pilgrim Jim's Treasure Field
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Matthew 6:21
KJV
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MEMORIES OF WINTER
Winter
is coming, with it's cold winds, snowy days, and icy paths but also with it's
beauty, stillness and memories. Spring, summer and warm weather always seem to
have been so short as winter approaches but the thoughts of winter bring some
pleasant and warm memories. I remember going into the woods with my Dad to cut
wood in the winter time, when we lived near the banks of #4 ditch, five miles
east of Bernie, Stoddard County, Missouri. We didn't have a sleigh like the one
in the picture, but I remember my brother and my Dad hooking a chain or rope to
some logs and pulling them out to a clearing, with a team of horses. I was
too little to be much help but I enjoyed being there and watching. Sometimes we
would fill a wagon with either cut wood or logs and haul it to the house. I
enjoyed riding on the wagon. When we got home we would pile the wood near the
woodshed. We would place a log into the vee of some saw horses and Dad and
my brother would cut the wood into stove lengths with a long, two handled,
crosscut saw. Sometimes I would sit on the log to keep it from turning.
Sometimes it turned anyway and "Ouch!" that could cause some discomfort. I
remember swinging the axe to split wood into smaller pieces for use in the
kitchen cook stove. My mother could cook up some very tasty food on that old
cook stove.
I remember that on some winter nights I
heated one of my mother's sad irons, wrapped it in some heavy cloth and stuck it
under the bed covers to be a foot warmer. That felt good! I remember
standing as close to the heating stove as I could get on some winter mornings,
when a skim of ice had frozen in the drinking water bucket in the kitchen. The
heat from the stove felt good too, unless you "Ouch!" got too close. I remember
taking baths, outside, in a galvanized wash tub, then heading to the house pretty quickly
when the weather was cool. Sometimes a couple of buckets of cold water from the
hand pump made for a pretty lively rinse, on the way into the house, naked as a
picked bird. Whew, makes
me shiver just to think of it.
The painting at the top of this page is
hanging in our living room. O Lord, help us to enjoy the music
and good memories of life.
James Lloyd Clark