Week 5 -- Theme

Not sure if I am on the right track or not, but here goes anyway.

When I was in the seventh grade, we moved from Milbridge to Harrington. In Milbridge we had a nice house. What a shock when we moved to Harrington. We moved into what used to be an old one room schoolhouse, my dad told us it was where he had gone to school.

We went from all of the conveniences, to one big room which we separated off into rooms so to speak with furniture, curtains or whatever. There was no running water, no inside plumbing and the only thing for heat was the big old heater stove. At first, being in the summer wasn't to bad felt as though we were camping. As all of the old stories go, we had to lug water form the stream, which was at the bottom of a small hill. The drinking water though we would go across the road and get from my grandfathers house. The only good thing that I remember is that we didn't actually have to go outside to the outhouse. The outhouse was attached to the main building. Wow!!!!!!!!! what a change.

So anyway the summer wasn't bad. We did all of the things that we had always done. Planted a garden, had the chickens for eggs, raised a pig, live was as usual. But what a pain in the ass come winter. The outhouse was freezing cold, the house not much better in the morning, as the fire had gone out before morning. Always had to bring in wood. I look back on all of this now and wow wonder how in the world would kids today survive if they had to live through those days.

It was a beautiful winter day. The brook has flooded out into the meadow, and nicely frozen, great ice skating. There were always extra kids around our house, seems there were 5 of us and we were always allowed to have friends over. We all decided to get a bigger crowd together and have an ice skating party. We must have ended up with about 12 to 15 of us. My dad had just killed one of the pigs and was getting it ready to cut up and wrap to put in the freezer for some of our winter food.

My older cousin and his girlfriend were with us to ice skate. My parents had to go somewhere, maybe to the store to get wrapping paper or something. So they were brave and left all of us kids there ice skating and supposedly under the supervision of my cousin and I. My youngest brother was maybe 4 or 5. Couldn't ice skate but we had to take him anyway, pulling him around in a sled. Skated for a long time and then as usual we all started getting cold. At first, 2 or 3 would go to the  house, then not long and some more would go back to the house. Until eventually, we were all back at the house. Good thing we came up when we did cause the stove needed wood, or it wouldn't have been much warmer in the house.

Ice-skating works up an appetite. Everyone was hungry. Hot Chocolate was at the top of the order, and we went through a big canister. One of the girls said, "We drank it all, what will your mother say?" "Oh, she won't care," I replied. Looking through the cupboards, there wasn't much to eat. But, there were two trays of fresh pork chops in the fridge. Well, we decided that we would cook some of them. Some of them we did. Oh my god, actually we cooked most all of them.  Just as we were finishing up my parents came home.

What a mess we had needless to say mom wasn't very happy with the mess. But, she began giving off orders and it wasn't long before things were cleaned up. The rule was if you were there you had to help, didn't matter who you were. Then dad started to get things ready to take care of the pork. He got some of the loins and roast taken care of. Then he went to the fridge to get the pork chops to wrap and take care of. Oh my, he started to yell, "Where in the hell did all of the pork chops go?" "We were hungry so we cooked a few of them" I said. "A few" he yelled, "Looks like you cooked quite a few. What in the hell were you thinking?" "I don't know, they just wanted more." I replied.

Needless to say everyone scattered like flies. Dad didn't very often get mad about much, so everyone was surprised. He wasn't happy with us at all.