This is one of my Hoosier Girl stories.\u00a0\u00a0 Things I remember.\u00a0\u00a0It may\u00a0not be what other members of my family remember,\u00a0 but I’m sticking with my story.<\/p>\n
Sleds and Santa<\/p>\n
\u00a0 A heavy blanket of snow covered Daddy’s Indiana farm.\u00a0 Katie looked out the kitchen door and saw drifts of snow on the sidewalk and back porch.\u00a0 Daddy came in the back door carrying an armload of firewood to put in the\u00a0big \u00a0black iron stove that sat in the kitchen. As Katie ate her breakfast of hot sweet tea and cinnamon toast, she felt warm and cozy.\u00a0 Daddy sat at the head of the table and Mommy sat next to him. They were discussing what needed to be done that day on the farm.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 Katie’s brothers came down from the cold upstairs.\u00a0 Katie’s bedroom window had had frost on the inside of it that morning!\u00a0\u00a0 She had not wanted to leave her warm nest in her bed.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 “Hey, let’s go sledding this afternoon,” said Andy.\u00a0 That sounded like a great idea to all the children\u00a0 First all the chores must\u00a0 be done before play.\u00a0 On a farm the livestock comes first and all the animal must be fed and watered before anything else.\u00a0 The eggs must be gathered before they froze in their nests.\u00a0 That was Katie’s job.\u00a0 Soon they were all bundled to go outdoors to do their chores.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 The cold wind whipped Katie’s face as she walked to the chicken house.\u00a0 Inside it was warm and the chickens began clucking and stirring when they saw Katie.\u00a0 Sometimes Katie would have to reach underneath a setting hen to take her egg.\u00a0 The hen would not like this, but it had to be done.\u00a0 Eggs were never left to be hatched in the hen house.\u00a0 Mommy used many eggs in her\u00a0baking each week and the ones she didn’t use were carefully washed and crated and taken to the grocery store to be sold to the grocer for him to resell.\u00a0 Mother’s chicken eggs were especially good.\u00a0 Thy were always fresh and the yolks almost orange.\u00a0 That was because the chickens were allowed to peck and scratch outside and eat a lot of different things besides the ground corn Daddy fed them.\u00a0 The eggs purchased in grocery stores today have very light colored yolks and are not always as fresh as they could be.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 After a good hot midday meal, Katie and her brothers dressed in several layers of clothes and snow boots and gloves and hats and went out to Daddy’s workshop where the sleds were kept\u00a0 They walked down the road to a hill owned by a neighbor, Mr. Bond.\u00a0 Sometimes he would have cows in the field where the hill was, but they never came near the children.<\/p>\n
\u00a0They climbed over the fence and trudged through the deep snow to the top of the hill.\u00a0 It seemed gigantic to Katie.\u00a0 The first few times sledding down were\u00a0not very good because paths had to be made through the snow.\u00a0 After a few rides down the hill it became slicker and slicker until you were absolutely flying!\u00a0 At the bottom of the hill was a small grove of trees that had to be maneuvered through.\u00a0 It was dangerous, but fun at the same time.\u00a0 Sometimes the Clevenger boys, who lived across the road, came over and joined the fun.\u00a0 The boys liked to throw snowballs at one another as they sled down the hill.\u00a0 Katie liked it when they threw snowballs at her even though she cried for them to stop.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 All too soon for Katie it was time to go back home.\u00a0 She was chilled to the bone but hadn’t noticed while she was sledding.\u00a0 Back in the warm house Mommy made hot chocolate and Daddy popped corn and made popcorn balls.\u00a0 After all the exercise it all tasted so good.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 Sometime during the winter season Daddy and Mommy began whispering to one another and hiding things from the children.\u00a0 It was Christmas time, one of the best times of the year for a child.\u00a0 Soon after Thanksgiving the Christmas tree would be cut down and set in the front room and decorated and Mommy would put the red plastic wreaths with the red bulbs in the windows.\u00a0 A plastic Santa riding a reindeer was one of Katie’s favorite Christmas decorations.\u00a0 It lit up and looked so merry.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Katie became so excited\u00a0 that she was about to burst with excitement.\u00a0 There would be a Christmas party at school and a special Christmas program at church to celebrate Jesus’ birth.\u00a0 It was all wonderful.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 As Christmas drew nearer Katie could hardly contain herself.\u00a0 What would Santa bring her this year?\u00a0 Then, finally, it was Christmas Eve.\u00a0 One year Katie wanted to stay up and see if Santa was really the one who brought the toys each Christmas.\u00a0 She begged Mommy to allow her to stay up if her older sister, Joanne, stayed up with her. “You may stay up, but you will be asleep before Santa gets here,” said Mommy.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 That night Katie and Joanne each picked a chair to sleep in.\u00a0 With pillows and blankets they prepared to stay up and see old St. Nick bring their presents.\u00a0 Katie waited and waited until she felt her eyelids becoming heavier and heavier.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 All at once there was a soft glow in the room\u00a0 Katie rubbed her eyes because she could not believe what she was seeing.\u00a0 In front of her, so close she could have touched him, was a short, round little man in a beautiful red wool suit with the whitest fur trim.\u00a0 He had a grand beard that covered his chest.\u00a0 Katie sat in silence for fear the man would notice her.\u00a0 It was Santa Claus and he might be angry to see her watching.\u00a0 Suddenly he turned around and looked directly at Katie and smiled at her and said, “Go back to sleep, Honey.”\u00a0 Katie felt no fear, but a feeling of love surrounded her. \u00a0The next thing Katie knew she was waking up in her own bed.\u00a0 It was Christmas morning.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 The children all had to wait until Mommy and Daddy said it was okay to come down the stairs.\u00a0 When they did. there was a mad dash to get to the Christmas tree to see what Santa had left them.\u00a0 Katie doesn’t remember what she got that year, but she does remember it was the year she saw the real Santa Claus.<\/p>\n
The End<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0 I remember this as though it were yesterday.\u00a0 It is as real to me today as it was when I was a little\u00a0girl.\u00a0 I\u00a0believe.\u00a0 Bye.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is one of my Hoosier Girl stories.\u00a0\u00a0 Things I remember.\u00a0\u00a0It may\u00a0not be what other members of my family remember,\u00a0 but I’m sticking with my story. Sleds and Santa \u00a0 A heavy blanket of snow covered Daddy’s Indiana farm.\u00a0 Katie looked out the kitchen door and saw drifts of snow on the sidewalk and back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,11,5,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family-memories","category-fun-times","category-home-and-family","category-original-stories-by-kate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3865"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3865\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3869,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3865\/revisions\/3869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}