Winter, vivid pictures of years past come into view. Bring your coffee and join me for a few minutes if you will and walk into the mountains of my childhood home with me. The winds outside my kitchen window are transporting me to a cold winter morning in the snow-covered mountains of West Virginia. The kitchen stove where Momma’s breakfast menu will be prepared has been filled with coal and the Warm Morning stove in the living room is heating up nicely and I stand close to it, shivering and absorbing the warmth it generates.
The snow outside has painted my mountains with a beauty that we kids found very inviting because it has us looking forward to the annual search for a Christmas tree when the holidays draw near. We never hesitated and gave consideration that the temperatures would plummet. We always had a coat and hat to wear and some gloves, which occasionally were cowboy themed with fringe on the cuffs.
SCHOOL DAYS... In my West Virginia mountain home.
Momma, so attentive to the needs of her kids, brings the Hershey's cocoa from the cabinet measuring with sugar into a large cup, she then lifted the teakettle with steaming water from the cast iron surface of the coal stove and poured it into the cup leaving enough room to add the Carnation milk. The spoon tapping the side of the cup as she stirs tells me the rich chocolate drink is ready, Ahh. And I loved to dip my toast in the hot chocolate; how tasty that was! Remembering the different scenes as I re-visited my school days.
Getting up early this cold and brisk winter morning and travelling the rugged path to school presents its own challenges. "The hillside is steep and uneven; it can be very tiring to navigate. Bobby socks are a must and still my toes feel frozen by the time we arrive in the classroom to cozy up to the radiator "
It's so hard to pull myself away from that Warm Morning heater in the living room as I make my way to the door.
The chill in the mountain air makes us speak in frosted breath.
I have my sandwich of sliced Tree with mustard and a white snowball lunch cake in my brown paper bag, laying on top of the books I have folded in my arms. No backpack here.
I began my education at Vivian Grade School while we lived in Bottom Creek. Then during my first grade, we moved to Maitland where I continued school through eighth grade at Superior-Maitland Elementary. I began my high school years at Welch.
We traveled a winding path through the wooded hillside and down sloping areas before crossing a footbridge at the end of the main camp. The bridge led through a concrete tunnel under the highway, which exited on the school grounds. Sometimes in cold, snowy weather, we walked through the main part of the camp because it was much easier to walk through the snow down in the camp than trudge through the drifts on the hillside. On rare occasions, a mother who was warming her car to drive her kids to school might offer us a ride.
I recollect my days at Superior-Maitland Elementary school with fondest memories. I can smell the waxy scent of Crayola crayons and the chalk dust on the blackboard tray where the felt erasers nested. The wooden plank floors appeared to have grease spots on them, and I remember Les, our custodian, would sprinkle something that looked like sawdust on the hall floors and sweep it away with a wide broom. His quarters, which we could see when the door was ajar, were in the basement of the school building where a gigantic, coal-fired furnace with metallic tentacles was fueled to warm our classrooms. As we played outside during recess, we were drawn by our childish curiosity to sneak a peek inside the basement door, simply because it was off limits to children.
During my elementary school years, Mom painstakingly sculpted my black hair into a massive bundle of banana curls and trimmed a straight row of bangs across my forehead. Just one flip of a curl from a little boy in the desk behind me was grounds for romance!
Little boys, influenced by their hero, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier, donned coonskin hats. We little girls looked with admiration at these little boys in their hats as though they were the star of a television program.
When I reflect on my experiences in grade school, I must applaud the competency of all my teachers. Notably, they were women of excellence and great role models. who exhibited genuine pride in their vocation. They very much deserved the respect with which we were instructed to treat them.
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