Story from Pop Pop

 Here is a childhood memory from Pop Pop:

My childhood was one that I would not share most memories with anyone other than my siblings. They alone would understand the brutality and horror that filled so many days and nights of our innocent lives. Our father was the source of all our pain.

That said, I do recall one of the rare occasions that I think of often and fondly.

    Late one cold wintry night, my dad came into my bedroom. He woke me and told me to dress in my warmest outdoor clothes. With yawns and stretches, I came downstairs to find my two sisters dressed and waiting for me. When he wanted, my dad was very good at raising suspense. He took us to the door and flung it open.

The moonless night was very dark but the few street lights illuminated thick falling snow. I was a wee lad then and it looked to my large eyes that the snow was at least three feet deep. I now suppose that it was about a foot or so. Grabbing one sled and our ‘saucers’, (those concave aluminum dishes with handles on the sides) my dad led us out, down from our apartment, across a ravine, and up a hill to a bare section of the hill that had many gullies. These were formed from years of flowing water.

We crawled to the top of a ridge and watched as my dad took a saucer and slowly made his way slowly over the fresh loose snow. Now it was packed down perfectly. I don’t know how long we went up and down the hill, but, my little mind says ‘for hours’.

All too soon, my dad called a halt to this and thinking that we were going home, I was shocked when he said that we were going for a long walk. Next, to my amazement, he told “me” to sit on the sled. Now we lived way up on the hills that ran along the Ohio river.

In a wonderland of falling snow that twinkled in the lights of the town, my dad pulled me all the way into town to his brothers house, which was dark and no-one answered the door.

From there my dad pulled me, through all the twinkling snow, back through the town and up the hill to our tenement apartment. I have no specific memories regarding my sisters, but I’m sure that they were tired by the time we go home. My memory ends before we got home but I’m sure someone carried me into the apartment, got me into my “PJ’s” and put me to bed.

This memory contains no yelling, hitting or pain. It remains pure sweetness in this old man’s ‘little boy’s mind’. The snow, the saucers, the sled and the winter wonderland of twinkling snow is my Currier and Ives memory.