another snippet ~

As mentioned in my prior post, I am working on a little book to pass down to my children and grandchildren.  Here is another little snippet from my childhood and beyond.

This snippet is from the Chapter THE GAMES WE WOULD PLAY

 

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We always had horses to ride when we were kids.  Dad was the one who taught us about horses.  He would ride the trails through the woods with us and our friends when we were little.  Our horses sure did provide hours upon hours of entertainment for us.  Gosh... when I think about it... we really did have a lot of horses over the years.  Some of the  names that I can recall are Poncho, Little Ben, Billy, Penny, Cindy, Dick, Diamond, Princess, Rex, Cocoa, Dixie, Amber Gal, Sparky, Jasper, Prince, Old Babe, Buck, ... I know there's more than that; but my memory just isn't up to par these days.  A few of these horses (Dick and Diamond for sure) were from the Boyd's Mason Lake Resort that we wintered over along with  about 3 more.  The others that I mentioned I know for sure were ours year round.  

 

Tobogganing behind the horse was another great way to spend time.  We would pile as many kids as we could on the toboggan and my brother Doug or Dad would tie a long rope to the saddle horn  and tie the other end to the toboggan and off we'd go.  You had be careful doing that.  If the horse was going too fast he would throw up snow and ice chunks from his hooves.  You also had to be careful not to run into the horse when he slowed down. Dad and Doug were pretty good horsemen so we didn't have to worry too much about skidding into them.  It was just those darn ice chunks.  I remember seeing stars once because of them.

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another snippet: also from THE GAMES WE WOULD PLAY

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Skating was another fun pastime of winters gone by.  Over at Aunt Lorraine and Uncle Merlin's place, outside of Fifield, was a favorite spot.  They had a decent sized pond that would freeze over and Uncle Merlin would shovel it off for us to play on.  Also, our neighbors Al and Adeline Myer would let us come over to their place.  They were the grandparents to the Warren kids (Dawn, Paul & Jodi ... also Neal & Joy Zirbel).  They lived down the end of the road that Lorna Zirbel (their daughter and Kate Warren's sister) lived at by your Uncle Randy's place on County Road B.

Al would shovel off the yard and put water on it to freeze over.  Our neighborhood had our very own skating rink that was even better than the one that they had in town. Plus, Adeline always had hot chocolate and cookies for us before we headed home. 

We also did a bit of skating on our swamp one winter when the sewer flooded and froze over.  It was at Randy's suggestion.  Mom wasn't too happy with us when she found out what we were doing.  I remember having to strip off all our clothes outside on one particular bitter cold day to wash up before she would let us in the house.  

Lesson learned.  You don't skate on a flooded  sewer, even if it is frozen, and especially if it was at Randy's suggestion.  He was such an instigator!  More about him later.

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Until next time ...

So it goes in my neck of the woods.

~mel