January - 1949

So far, this is a month of very cold temperatures with little snow on the valley floor here, in the Truckee Meadows in northern Nevada. The winter of 1949 was a cold one, too, in southern Idaho, plus lots of snow. Where attempts had been made to clear a way through, snow was piled higher than roof tops. I've seen pictures that show me perched on top of those snow cliffs, crying into my frozen mittens. Someone went to a lot of work to get me up there for a photo op. Drifts reached the eaves of our house with no help from shovels. As a five year old, I remember one of my brothers picking me up and tossing me off the front porch out into snow drifts that covered the front yard.

After Christmas that year, Mother let me go to McKay's, across the road and a little ways down, maybe a block or so, going East towards the river. I wanted to show Sondra my new dolly. I left our farm house but hadn't gone very far down the road until snow began to fall, covering tracks I was following. I got off the middle of the road a bit and kept sinking down into the drifted snow. About halfway between houses, ours and hers, I finally gave up and sat down with my doll still in my arms. I was no longer on the road but instead, in the snow-drifted irrigation ditch that ran alongside. I had sunk down into that space quite a bit and was all but buried, just my head still sticking out. Soon, I was feeling drowsy and it was getting dark. With snow swirling all around, I would have frozen to death soon had someone not come looking for me right about then. I remember sitting up on Mother's old wooden, ironing board, having my feet and hands rubbed to try to get the circulation going again. That really hurt.

I remember, also that winter, riding with my dad in the big sleigh pulled by his team of horses, Pat and Mike, as they walked over fence tops on crusted snow. In what had been a sugar beet field, Daddy would dig his way down through the frozen drifts to find beet tops left laying from Fall's harvest. He needed everything he could find to stretch his store of hay and grain and keep his animals fed. My dad worked so hard to provide. He endured much. Winters like that one could have made the best of men cranky but I never saw that in him.

It must have been that winter of '49, too--and there must have been more hard winters like it--, that our dad and his boys had to shovel a tunnel from the barn out along our lane to reach the road that passed by our place, so the milk cans could be picked up by the Cache Valley Dairy truck. Those were times it was good to be a girl and spoiled, a little.

For years, I didn't like to hear that I was spoiled but now, on another very cold, winter day, if it is "spoiled" to be inside a warm house and not out working in the frigid air, slipping and sliding on snow-coated ice, I'm likin' it just fine. It could be that "spoiled" is a part of who I am.