Up a Country Road

I think back on all the wonderful times I had living up that old country road when I was a girl. With all the snow we are having, I recall life in the winter up that old road.

I remember many times walking to the grocery store. We didn't own a car because neither of our parents drove. It was about a mile walk to the store. We would wrap up in layers of clothing for the hike in the winter to get milk and bread. I remember many a time wearing my jammies underneath my clothes for extra warmth. I remember wrapping my scarf up around my face and pulling my toboggan down to my eyes. We would wear two pairs of socks with our boots and wear two sets of gloves.

It never occurred to me to say I didn't want to go to the store. That was just the way it was. Mom or Dad one would go and one or two of us kids always tagged along. I remember always praying that there wouldn't be a train on the tracks. We had to cross a set of tracks on the way to the store. The trains went right through the rail yard that was in the middle of town. Sometimes they would stop as they went across the scales so we would be stranded just standing there waiting for the train to start back up. They were long coal trains so you could easily be stuck their for 30 minutes.

It was tiring; it was cold. The wind would freeze you and it was hard to walk with all those layers of clothes. But do you know what is strange? I don't remember ever complaining. I don't remember ever fussing or whining about it. It was life. It was what we did.

Now I think about how I get upset because I can't park close too the door when I go to the store. I hate when I have to walk to the back of a store when I run in to get one item. We have let society push us into rush mode and make us think we have to go, go, go. We need to take a moment to breathe. We need to go back in our minds to a simpler place and a simpler time and just slow down and enjoy the small things in life.