Nostalgia Stirs a Hope Comfort…
Mid-January’s
winter sun, a cold yellow blurred stain in a frigid grey-white bone-chilling
sky vacant of even the slightest hint of cerulean warmth, faux-promised errant dream-hope
of relief from the cold storage of a season’s icy snow sculptures as the old
man, now only several years shy of the seven-decade marker, absently stirred
his steaming cup of tea and held a half-eaten piece of buttered whole wheat
toast while staring empty-eyed through the dingy double-hung window overlooking
the barn lot where cattle moseyed toward the comfortable protection from coming
night air under the loafing overhang as they anticipated the evening feeding
time. No need for a fancy timepiece for one a-tuned to nature: January, 3p.m.
In
the time-space of just over an hour, the days already noticeably lengthening,
dark would challenge, overtake, and swallow up the spent daylight short hours.
He would finish the half cup of tea, munch the last taste of the toasted bread,
then, don his worn old corduroy dark
brown winter work coat, put on his earmuff cap of matching material, guard his
fingers in rabbit-fur lined leather gloves and brave the ten-degree temperature
on his daily trek to feed the stock.
By
the time he finished visiting the animals while talking to each by name,
forking loose alfalfa hay into the cattle manger and tossing two flakes each
into the horse stall trays, then adding pelleted sweet grain for the steeds and
placing ear corn in with the cattle fodder and giving the sheep some straw,
dusk had quickly come and gone leaving a slight pinkish blush on the western
horizon. Removing snow-flecked boots, coat and hat after entering the
glassed-in porch, he gathered several hickory logs and one cedar offering for
the wood-burning cast iron stove in the living room to which the old man
retired for a long winter night’s respite.
Lighting
his old kerosene lantern, the house sported electricity, had for decades, still
he preferred the warmth of old-time ambiance, and, secretly, he enjoyed the
pungent odor of the burning fuel, the old man settled into his rocking chair by
the glowing stove, fished reading glasses from a tattered flannel shirt pocket
from which the cover flap hung by one, or, two, remaining stitches, settled in
pulling the American flag afghan across his legs and picking up the Cabela’s
sportsman’s catalog old Cassidy had delivered to the box at the county road on
his daily noon-time mail run. “Winter-white” sales adorned the cover
illustrated with a whitetail buck, antlers glinting, bounding over deadfall in
a snow covered forest with a lean coyote on his heels.
The
old man smiled as the imagined scene of some city-slicker artist’s rendition of
“how” things ought to be brought flashes of pleasant memories of by-gone hunts
to a lively mind...
(Part 2---tomorrow"s post)
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