Old-Fashioned Winter Fun

Published in The Republican Journal Supplement - WinterwiZe

4 Nov. 1993, by Isabel Morse Maresh

*Snow angels, sledding, family get-togethers helped make winter go faster.

Oh, how we enjoy opening the windows to the past to see life so simplistic and uncluttered. Life was hard in the olden days, but everyone needed to take some time for fun, just to make the daily load easier. In those days, the snow was much higher, the cold was colder, and the walk to school and the neighbors was much further. How well we remember the first cold nights of the season, finding the first ice on the water bucket.

As the new snow fell, the children would carefully walk around the untraveled field, following in each other’s track to make “angels in the snow,” lying down in the fresh snow, flapping their arms and rising carefully to see the outline of the “angel”.

The snow continued to fall throughout the winters, making a drift that was walked on right up to the ridgepole of the back of the shed. As rain came, a cold snap froze a thick crust, inches thick enough to slide on by moonlight. All of the kids around slid together on bobsleds, runner sleds, shingles, pieces of cardboard, and whatever could be found. Sliding double and triple on a sled was fun until the combined weight caused the runners to cut through the crust, sometimes causing bloody noses and cut faces as the front person slammed into a sharp crust.

The ice froze on lakes, ponds, and puddles making natural ice-skating rinks. The men and boys braved the cold winds to spend the day ice fishing. Lake Megunticook was used as a shortcut from Lincolnville to Camden. More than one team of horses and cargo went through the ice, sometimes losing all to the frigid waters, including horses and driver.

A Camden Herald item dated 1 April 1892, related: “L. H. Knight, G. W. Lermond, and F. H. Levenseller have been improving these fine days, trotting their colts on Levenseller Pond. It is hard to tell who has the best one.” An item, dated Feb. 1893, also from the Camden Herald, related, "A party consisting of Misses Katie Lermond, Lulu Thomas, Addie Levenseller, Ralph Heal and George Lermond went on a sleigh ride last Wednesday, Feb. 1, to Northport to visit Miss Alice Knight and took tea. Miss Knight did all in her power to make the evening an enjoyable one and they returned home after spending a very pleasant evening." I can imagine the sleigh bells ringing as they traveled to and from home on the crisp snow.

The cold days sent the family into the woods to cut evergreen boughs to bank the house to keep out the drafts. Every little bit helped in the old uninsulated houses. Some families went a step further and banked their gravestone. The purpose may have been to insulate the granite from the frost.

The long winter evenings were spent by lamp and candlelight with any excuse for a get-together. In our family every birthday or anniversary was celebrated on a Saturday night by playing cards, “63” being the favorite. Couples were paired off to play the game, and many a player took the game very seriously. Each person brought their home-cooked specialty. Popcorn was popped in the long-handled wire popper on the wood cookstove. Cold ‘Northern Spy’ apples were brought up from the dark cellar by the bowlful, pumpkin seeds were sometimes baked, which were eaten with molasses or plain, while the men enjoyed pitchers full of my father’s prize doctored hard apple cider. My father obtained the secret recipe from his father-in-law, my grandfather.

In some households, a musical instrument arrived with the player, and the table was pushed against the wall, and a dance began. I only recall once that a neighbor came and played his guitar for us.

We weathered the cold winters layered in the long white one-piece underwear with the scuttle-seat flap, and the hated long brown cotton and wool stockings, held up by garters on harnesses that went over the shoulders.

I recall once my father, always a dickerer, got some new high-top leather button shoes, probably very outdated by the time we got them.

I thought that they were great, and couldn’t understand why my older cousin laughed at them at a family gathering.

My grandmother who had overheard, quietly and sternly put a stop to the laughter.

Clothing was all hand-made unless it was hand-me-downs from a distant cousin. I remember a wool one-piece snowsuit which Santa Claus brought, though I saw my mother making it from an old wool topcoat. In later years, I heard of the fancy one-piece brand-name snowsuits that some of my cousins wore. I’ll wager that my hand-made snowsuit was as warm as anyones.

Our dresses with matching panties, bedspreads, quilts, and many other things were made from the colored feed sacks that the grain for the cattle came in.

My aunts had chicken feed, and it seemed that their feed sacks were prettier than ours, but we felt quite dressed up when we got a new dress from the sacks.

My aunt, who lived nearby, made quilts from the white feed sacks that were put in the sun to whiten, or sometimes to be dyed, with dye made from roots or berries.

Special times were the Christmas programs at the one-room schoolhouse.

We had a large tree with a bucket of water underneath. At school, as well as at home, we made colored paper chains, strung popcorn and red berries, and made decorations from any shiny piece of paper that we could find. The only store-bought decoration that I remember as a child was a wire star, covered with tinsel twisted garland with a picture of my sister in the center. My sister Janette had died at age eleven in 1941. I now have a star with her picture like the one I remember.

I remember one of the one-room schoolhouse Christmas programs for the parents where each child either was in a play or recited a poem. My younger brother Raymond forgot his lines. My mother sat with my younger sister, Annie, who was not old enough to go to school. As Raymond stood on the make-shift stage, Annie prompted, “Jest a little baby boy, Raymie!” At one of the Christmas programs, a couple of the gifts fell into the bucket of water. We prized the gift we got, wet or not, as we received few gifts.

The most special gift that I recall was the year that my sister died. I was six years old, and couldn’t understand why Janette was not coming home from the hospital. I unwrapped the biggest gift under the tree at home, and there was a large beautiful composition baby doll.

I ran to the kitchen to show my mother who was making biscuits for breakfast, the doll that Santa had brought me.

Looking back, I know now that my mother was crying. That was the only doll that I ever received, until later in life, and no doll was ever loved more, but composition dolls are not for children’s playing.

The dog chewed her up one night when I forgot to take care of her.

When the weather was too cold and blustery to go out, the wives would keep the wood fires burning, and spend the day baking, cooking, and sewing. All our meals were cooked on the woodstove. The wives learned how to control a wood fire to bake, and when a cake or something else did burn, the burned part was scraped off, and a nutmeg or vanilla sauce was made to make it palatable, and the family didn’t know the difference.

The only containers that were opened were those harvested, canned, and salted in season. My mother prided herself on canning about one hundred quarts of each vegetable and fruit. She could make a batch of hot biscuits in a short time, at least twice a day. During the cold days, quilts were made; socks, mittens, and sweaters were knitted, crocheted, or made from an old wool coat. My father showed my mother how he had made a pattern by drawing around his hand, cutting out from an old wool coat, and blanket-stitched around it, making warm mittens. His grandmother, who had raised him, taught him how to make the mittens.

In some areas, bees were held to make quilts, work together and enjoy the company. At the Grange hall during the Fall, the members and friends gathered for a country fair, complete with horse pulling, exhibits of prize apples, canned goods, vegetables, and ‘fancy work’.

Everyone went home for the holidays. My mother told of harnessing the horse at the Mahoney Ranch in East Searsmont for a trip to go ‘over home’ to her parents in Lincolnville.

With a bundled-up baby Richard, the wagon tipped over. She abandoned it in a snowbank and continued on with the horse and the baby. Another time, she and Daddy bundled Richard under a blanket in the back of the wagon with a lantern to keep him warm. When they arrived, Richard was black from the soot.

The harnesses were decorated with sleigh bells to warn approaching sleighs on the narrow rolled, snow-packed roads.

Old-timers said the “Jingle Bells” was not a Christmas song, but a winter song. Times were slower than and not as complicated as life later became.