Christmas Break

What did you do during Christmas break when you were a kid? It is a question my grandkids ask me, wondering how my brothers and I could keep busy with no TV, no computers, no electronic gadgets to listen to, watch, or, in the case of the newer ones, interact with, no cell phones to call friends.

I explained that after the chores were done, we skied, ice skated, went sledding and ice fished. We ice fished a lot, nearly every day between Christmas and New Years. We sat around a smoky campfire built on shore and watched our tip-ups (a simple standalone ice fishing device stuck in a hole chopped in the ice). We listened to my dad and uncle’s fishing stories, hunting stories, farming stories, logging stories. The same ones told over and over, always the same but always different because with each retelling, I would hear some twist, some new angle to the tale.

Of course my grandkids also do their share of outdoor winter stuff; all five of them ski, go sledding, and ice skate. But no ice fishing, no smoky campfires and no uncle embellished stories.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: Always remember as through life you roll, to keep your eye on the doughnut and not on the hole—except when you are ice fishing.

Happy New Year!

UPCOMING EVENTS:

January 14, 9:00 AM, WTMJ 4 TV, Milwaukee. Old Farm featured.

January 19, 6:00 PM, Portage (Columbia County) Historical Society dinner, Old Farm featured. Call 608-742-1445 for further information.

January 30, Viroqua Public Schools.

Christmas Gift

When I was a kid, the weeks before Christmas my brothers and I pored over the Sears Christmas Catalog. What a wondrous book it was, filled with photos of electric trains and wood burning sets, air rifles and books for boys. Also shoe skates (ours clamped on the shoes we had) and skis. Fancy skis with a contraption that fit around the backs of your boots so the skis did not come off.

In those days, the waning years of the Depression and World War II, my brothers and I could each pick one special thing we wanted for Christmas. Beyond that special thing, we received new socks, maybe a sweater, a new cap with ear laps, or even a new Mackinaw coat if ours had worn out.

When I was twelve I asked for a new pair of skis. I picked out the exact ones I wanted from the Sears wish book.

We did not open presents on Christmas morning until we had milked the cows, fed the chickens, carried in wood and did the other necessary farm chores. When we got to the presents there were no skis for me under the tree. Merely some new mittens, a blue flannel shirt, and a pair of wool socks. I said nothing. Disappointment visited our family often during those years.

--I have forgotten something--, Pa said, with a smile on his face. He walked out to the pump house and brought in a pair of skis. He handed them to me. --You wondering about these? --he said.

One ski was brown and one was black; apparently something had happened to the other brown one and other black one so Mr. Hotz at Hotz Hardware in Wild Rose said Pa could have them for half price. Color did not matter much to me. They did not have any fancy bindings, merely leather straps that fit over my boots. No matter. I now had a pair of store-bought skis to replace the home-made ones my Grandpa Witt had made of birch boards he had steamed and bent up on the ends.

It was a Very Merry Christmas.

THE OLD TIMER REMEMBERS WHAT HIS MOTHER OFTEN SAID: It is more blessed to give than to receive.

UPCOMING EVENTS:

January 14, 9:00 AM, WTMJ 4 TV, Milwaukee. Old Farm featured.

January 19, 6:00 PM, Portage (Columbia County) Historical Society dinner, Old Farm featured. Call 608-742-1445 for further information.

January 30, Viroqua Public Schools.

Christmas Program

The annual Christmas Program at our one-room country school was the highlight of the year for our farming community. Everyone in the neighborhood attended. Parents, grandparents, cousins, folks from town, bachelor farmers. Everyone was there.

I remember fondly the year a trio of girls stood on the rickety plank stage and sang Away in a Manger. Mrs. Jenks, our teacher, played the accompaniment on the piano and could only see the stage out the corner of her eye. As the girls began, Away in the manger, no crib for his bed, a little field mouse that had taken up residence in the old piano was awakened by the clatter of piano hammers pounding against wires.

The trio continued, The little Lord Jesus lay down his sweet head, as the mouse crawled out of the piano, where Mrs. Jenks could not see it, and proceeded to prance across the stage in front of the girls. They abruptly stopped singing and rushed off the stage. The audience of course saw it all and began laughing loudly. Mrs. Jenks, not knowing what had happened, was furious. Why were people laughing during Away in the Manger? And then she saw the mouse and joined the crowd in their merriment.

A Christmas program that no one forgot, and fondly recalled as the year a field mouse stole Christmas.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: Sometimes the harder you look, the less you see.


UPCOMING EVENTS:

January 14, 9:00 AM, WTMJ 4 TV, Milwaukee. Old Farm featured.
January 19, 6:00 PM, Portage (Columbia County) Historical Society dinner, Old Farm featured. Call 608-742-1445 for further information.
January 30, Viroqua Public Schools.

Winter Sounds

The sounds of the country change with the seasons, especially here in the Midwest, where seasonal change is often dramatic. The sounds of winter are the northwest wind sifting across my prairie, picking up wisps of snow and dropping it again in intricate patterns, rills and ridges, swirls and squiggles. On a cold night in January, the sound of winter is the wind tearing at the cabin, trying to seep in around the windows and doors, challenging my woodstoves, and making a most mournful sound in the process.
Winter sounds can also be the most subtle. On a still day in November, when the temperature is just below freezing and the first heavy snow of the season arrives, the snowflakes, some of them huge, fall ever so lightly on naked tree limbs and dead prairie grass.
An unexpected sound is that of tree fibers exploding on below-zero days. I remember walking in our oak woods one quiet January morning, when the temperature was ten below zero. The only sound was the occasional crow calling in the distance, until I heard what I was sure was a rifle shot. I learned later from my father that it was tree fibers loudly protesting the cold. The sound happens infrequently enough to surprise the cold-weather walker in the woods each time he or she hears it.
The most mysterious of winter sounds might be the northwest wind shaking the dead leaves of the black oaks that still hang on the branches. Some have called this sound a death rattle and in a way it is. The oak leaves hang on until spring and then finally fall off to make way for new growth and the summer sound of warm breezes moving through green leaves. (From OLD FARM: A HISTORY)

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: Doing something hard gets a lot harder if you do too much thinking about it.


UPCOMING EVENTS:

December 9, 6:30 PM, Watertown Public Library. Old Farm and other stories.

December 12, 2:00- 3:00 PM, Book Signing, Fireside Bookstore, West Bend (December 6 was canceled because of weather).

December 13, 9:30-11:30 AM, Sheboygan Falls, Library. Sheboygan County Historical
Research Center. Old Farm: A History.

December 14, 1:00-3:00 PM. Barnes and Noble West, Madison. Books signing. Old Farm.

January 14, 9:00 AM, WTMJ 4 TV, Milwaukee. Old Farm featured.