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Show books I used in and out of season. You'd have thought from my language that I was the saltiest buccaneer who ever sailed the Spanish Main. Our living in the largest house in the valley, the only two-story one, and having most resources, with a sizable library and other evidences of former and present status, did not arouse unmixed admiration. Father's medical degree, his title of postmaster, and Mother's knowledge as a former schoolteacher and constant reader must have made some persons envious. In short, I probably seemed like a pampered, spoiled snob who could take a candy bar any time I pleased and who paraded his comparative affluence. So the boat Father made must have become a symbol, a target on which two or three boys could safely vent their spite when I was out of sight. Nevertheless, it was generally, as the song went, "a very good year." The cloudburst ponds naturally diminished as the dry desert air lapped them up. However, since this was a deceptive year, more showers came. They didn't register high on Father's rain guage but they helped renew the ponds. Heavy snows in late fall melted and ran into them. When sub-zero nights came in January, Father came up with another of his ideas to make life pleasanter for us. With his usual energy he sawed and chopped blocks of ice out of the closest pond. We stored these at the back of our "dugout," a sort of outside cellar just back of the kitchen door. Because we didn't have a basement under the dwelling-store, Father'd had this cellar excavated, walled and roofed with old replaced railroad ties, and covered deep with dirt. The dugout was mainly a;place for Mother to keep the fruit she bottled whenever a peddler from Dixie's orchards drove through our valley. But Father made room for the ice at the back and insulated it with sawdust and shavings. The ponds were not clean enough to furnish us water fit to put into pitchers of lemonade but we froze many a hand-turned freezerful of ice cream next summer. We always invited some neighbors to share the "ice cream social" with us. Father |
