Cold Comfort Farm

In the depth of this miserable winter (-40° windchill today) I yearn for a summer's day.

A day when I was a boy in my grandmother's kitchen, a small 12'x12' room in a country farm house. That kitchen was a room that was bursting with love, even though that word was seldom, if ever, uttered there. There was a round oaken table where many hours were spent playing card games: Five Hundred, Whist or, if old "Poker Charlie" happened to stop by, Smear.

Next to it stood the cupboard which held the good china, one of the few luxuries that my Grandmother possessed. Beyond that was the doorway which led into the entry. The pans for washing up were kept there, hanging by the screen door. The hand-pump was just outside, bringing up ice-cold well water, seasoned with a strong flavor of iron, and drunk from a copper cup hung on a hook fashioned from an old coat hanger. Spread around the yard were apple trees with apples so sour they couldn't be eaten- except after being baked into a pie. The potato patch was my Grandfather's domain—he grew Kennebecs—enough to last through the next winter. Running up to greet me with a stick in his mouth was Skipper, a dog who never tired of playing fetch. There was a wood pile on the south side of the barn, with a vegetable garden by the driveway on its north side. Down the road a half-mile or so was a creek with a mossy coolness under its bridge, making it a good place to wade.

Those days seemed to go on forever and then, after supper, so did the good-byes. We would drive home in the sunset, with the barns and road signs along the highway lit up in a ruddy, golden glow. When we finally got home, the stars would be fierce pinpricks of light blazing in the black velvet sky high above us.