The sun is inviting - outside the double-paned windows - where it glistens off of the more than two week old snow and the more than week old ice. The temp is maybe 10 degrees now. I was taking a few pictures down by the river an hour ago and the “breeze” cut right through my coat and gloves. My ambitious outdoors woman took our labrador retriever for a no doubt crunchy walk up our icy ridge road. In our warm kitchen, I was thinking about how tedious and difficult this time of year can get - for me anyway. I mean just going outside to the garage or up to the shop is a major undertaking right now, and might I mention a dangerous as well. One can not walk down the driveway here without putting on boots equipped with Yaktraxs or some other ice gripper set up to ward off a fall on the thick ice that seems to have grown a resistance to salt and sand. To spend any time outside, one needs to put on a respectable sporting goods department worth of warm cold weather gear. I go out bundled up like, well, like Ralphie’s little brother in the movie A Christmas Story even to just get the paper or mail. Ellen wants to get out on her snowshoes, but we need fresh snow in copious amounts on our trails. I could build some new bird houses or go ice fishing I guess, but I have a stack of new books to look over, and, well, dang it is cold out!
I was pondering this journal entry and it got me reflecting about what it must have been like in this house back in the day, like when it was just a log cabin in the late 1800’s. I know from recollections shared by our friends Doris Proksch Oldenburg of Chaseburg, who grew up on this former Proksch farm, that back in the day, the men went north to work in the lumber industry for cash money and the women and children stayed behind to keep the farm going.
In the cabin, no doubt there was a wood cookstove going and maybe lantern light, and maybe even a glassed in window or two. The cookstove would need constant tending as it was used for cooking, heating water, and heating the room. That would mean keeping the wood box filled and splitting kindling. No simple task, I might add. When I was in college in the 70’s Grandma Potter asked me to split some kindling for her out in the pole shed. She came out to see what was taking me so long and discovered I was a pathetic kindling maker. My 70 something grandma took the hatchet and commenced to split kindling, barehanded until there was enough to fill the wood box. Anyway, the aroma’s were most likely from wood smoke, coal oil or kerosene, cooking and bread baking, and maybe wet clothing drying by the fire. The log cabin part of our house is roughly 30 x 48 feet. That may have been relatively large at the time is was built, but I’m not sure. Water would need to be drawn and hauled to livestock and the house. There could have been snow to be shoveled, hay to hauled, and eggs to collect. If the men were home, there would be tools and harness to repair. Repairs in the buildings maybe too. This would have been a time of sledding and ice skating for the children, mending or quilting (I imagine there were plenty of quilts and blankets on the beds in winter) or maybe reading - most likely just the Bible. Doris’ husband Lawrence still picks out hickory nuts in winter and if there was a trapper in the family, there might have been skins to scrape and brush and stretch. Still for the children, there were probably games to be played in the snow like “duck, duck, goose” or snow angels to be made. Inside there might have been checkers or even chess and marbles and probably dolls and books like the The Bobbsey Twins or even a dime novel or two from the old west. There might have been a guitar or piano or harmonica to practice and entertain and/or pass the time. Probably there were lessons for the kids - the kids here would have had a nearly two-mile walk up the ridge to the one room school on Chipmunk Ridge (sadly, it burned down a few years ago.) That would be a long hike in the cold and snow by our standards, but they might have been able to sled back down the ridge road after school. From our experience, there seems to be plenty to do around a farm at any time, so no doubt there were chores for everyone.
Eventually, the families who lived here left their mark(s) adding a second floor along with a kitchen on the east side, a full basement was dug out, and another two story addition was added on the west side for the “old folks” to retire to A.K.A. our family room today. We have a photograph, compliments of Doris and Lawrence, of the place on a summer day in 1902 and all of these additions were in place. Thankfully indoor plumbing was installed along with several types of heating besides wood, including an oil furnace and electric baseboard heat (that was here in 1977). In our almost 40 years here, we installed a wood burning furnace in the basement and a wood fireplace in the living room (that we rarely use) and have remodeled the entire house except the stone basement, adding a porch around the family room that has a gas fireplace and we put a bath upstairs as well as twenty some thermal paned windows and doors and a few hundred pounds of thick insulation wherever we could get it installed. As many of you know, we also removed the wood stove and central chimney- there were three chimney’s total, and added a geothermal heating and air conditioning system with an LP furnace backup some years ago. Who knows what will be next by whomever? Quite an evolution for an old farm house built on land with a title signed by Abraham Lincoln.
Some would say that those were the good old days. Maybe so. All in all, no TV, radio, Netflix, NFL, video games, electric lights, etc. probably made for some long, cold days and nights that made for a long, dark winter. Still I would not trade my thermostat in the living room and the gas fireplace in the family room by the big screen or the flat top stove and microwave in the kitchen for that cookstove and kerosene lamp - no way, no how.
Until next time, get out - El and Scout are back inside after their walk. It was cold and icy enough El
said, but she saw much deer sign on the ridge. Wisconsin writer and historian Jerry Apps reflected on winter in his mid-December 2016 blog, writing that he rather likes winter and mentioning the quiet and finally describing winter a time to slow down and relax a bit. Good call Jerry. Enjoy.
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