“Hop on your motorcycles and roar
on down!” Grandma yelled cheerfully from the bottom of the stairs.
It was 6:00 a.m. on a bitterly cold school morning. Slowly,
my eight year old self opened blurry eyes adjusting to the soft light from the
night light that filled my room. These were the days when getting out of bed
like a jack rabbit on crack was easy. I threw on my overalls and a sweater and
was ready in a record 10 minutes. I looked out my bedroom window. There was a
blizzard outside. “Yes!” I thought “Maybe school will be cancelled today!”
Jordan (my kid brother) came to the door of his bedroom in
his white long johns, rubbing his eyes sleepily.
“Kaye”, he whined “Can you help me; I don’t know what to
wear.”
“Just put on
sweatpants and a sweatshirt BORP,” I
replied, enunciating his nickname, abandoning Jordan in his plight.
I ran to the top of
the stairs, trying to beat my older brother Joseph to the bathroom, so I could
brush my teeth before he “set up camp” in there. Just as I got to the top of the stairs Joseph
came running out of his room; pushing me aside and barreled down the stairs,
slamming the bathroom door.
“Hey! I yelled, hot on his heels.
On the door of the bathroom was a wooden sign:
“One knock, impatient query”
“Two knocks, hurry man hurry”
“Three knocks, I say don’t bother, bathroom door knocker.”
I banged on the bathroom door annoyingly, with the mallet
that hung off the sign. It seems Joseph beat me today.
“I don’t know what to wear!” Jordan cried sorrowfully from
upstairs.
My hand froze in mid knock as Grandma came around the corner
from the kitchen. “Get dressed Jord!” she snapped from the bottom of the
stairs. “Joseph!” Grandma yelled at my older brother in the bathroom “hurry up;
others have to use the bathroom!”
Giving up my mission for the time being, I followed Grandma
into the kitchen. On the stove was a big pot of chocolate Malt O’ Meal, my
favorite! KCUE played in the background.
“And now you know, the rest of the story,” said Paul Harvey.
“Here,” Grandma said placing a bowl of Malt O’ Meal in front
of me “Eat”.
Jordan came downstairs grumpily, his sweatshirt inside out,
wiping at his runny nose.
Grandma placed a bowl of Malt O’ Meal in front of Jordan.
Jordan wrinkled his face in disgust.
“Eat your food!” Grandma snapped “It will put hair on your
chest.”
“I don’t want it,” Jordan pouted.
“There are starving children in China, you should be
thankful you don’t live in China!” Grandma snapped again.
I looked at Jordan and grinned smugly. Watching Jordan get
fussed at was one of my chief pleasures.
Jordan caught me grinning. “Grandma, Kaye’s looking at me!” he
bawled.
“Jordan stop your bellyaching, Kaye stop looking at Jordan.”
Grandma intervened.
I waited until Grandma looked away and then turned to Jordan
and mouthed silently “Ha aha ha hahah ha!”
“Grandma!” Jordan cried “She is still looking at me.”
“Knock it off or both of you will go straight to bed after
supper.” Grandma threatened.
This was an awful sentence, which meant no playing in the
fresh snow tonight. We immediately shut up.
The bathroom door opened and Joseph strutted into the
kitchen. Sitting down at the counter he asked “Grandma, will you make me some
bacon and eggs?”
“No,” Grandma replied “you will eat what I made.”
Joseph sulked.
The announcer on the radio interrupted the polka fest and
said “I have a list of School Closings. Zumbrota-Mazzeppa, closed. Pine Island,
closed. Red Wing, closed.
“Maybe school will be closed today?” Jordan asked cheering
up.
“No, no, no” said Grandma “There will be school, you love
school.”
Just then the announcer said “Goodhue School….two hour
delay.”
We all let out a collective groan; our souls rankled with
the injustice. We could not face the prospect of the neighbor kids, who went to
Red Wing, pointing and laughing at us as we stood at the bus stop.
“Start getting your stuff around for school,” Grandma said,
not able to mask the glee in her voice.
With heavy hearts we began to gather our book bags, snow
pants, boots, scarves, mittens, jackets, and hats.
The announcer came on the radio again “I have another school
to add to the closing list. Goodhue Schools, closed.
There was a lot of jumping up and down, whooping for joy.
“No school?” Jordan asked sitting on the ground putting his
boots on. “No school?” he repeated. Then he let out a giggle which eerily
resembled that of SpongeBob.
“What?” Grandma said, her face falling as I stood in the
middle of the dining room and did a little butt shake in my winter gear.
“I was pretty sure they would call off school,” Joseph said
in a confident air, “The snowplows haven’t even gone through.”
“Aren’t you sad there is no school? Grandma asked baiting us.
Hahahaha, hell no! Joseph and I were not stupid enough to
repeat this to Grandma though.
Jordan on the other hand took the bait and piped up: “No, I
HATE school!”
You never told Grandma you hated school. “Then you don’t
need to go outside,” Grandma said threateningly to Jordan “You can stay inside
and study.”
“No I don’t want to,” Jordan bawled.
“Then don’t say you hate school,” Grandma snapped.
After the snow let up some, Bruce Alms (or “Mr. Man” as
Jordan called him) plowed his driveway. This was awesome because with the
amount of snow that had fallen that meant huge snow piles!
As we started to put on our snow things, the neighbor ‘Mac’
or Mackenzie came over. He rang the doorbell to the back porch.
“Is Smokey Joe
there?” he asked as I opened the door.
Joseph pushed me aside. I didn’t stick around to see what
Mac wanted and proceeded to run outside so I could be the first to climb the
snow piles.
This was great fun because we made snow forts and had
snowball fights. Sometimes we would sit in the forts and talk about life from a
kid’s point of view. The mystery of the itchy butt hole after eating snow. We
would take our snow discs and make paths down the side of the snow hills.
When
Grandma was upstairs putting the laundry away and not looking, we would sneak
into the house and take cups of water outside so we could make ice ramps. I
think that was prohibited by Grandma because she didn’t want us to get hurt by
busting our tailbones. We did it anyway.
Occasionally we would
have to help Jordan out of the snow because he had a bad habit of falling down
and not being able to get up. Most of the time he would just lay there like a
lump and cry until someone helped him.
The snow hills were “ours” and we were very territorial over
them. ‘Mac’ had immunity because he was friends with Joseph. However, say if
the neighbor girl, Emily came over (and she was definitely not one of “us”, she
would also eat all the snow we had set aside for our eating) we would go into a
full on armed attack, showing no mercy.
