”Soup is the song of the hearth… and the home.”
The morning is cold. Outside even looks cold. Right now it is 22°. Tonight it will go down to 17°. We currently have a wind advisory. All the trees and branches are swaying. When I went to get the paper, I gasped at the cold. It is a day to stay close to hearth and home.
The house where we lived when I was a kid was close to the top of a hill. Across the street from the bottom of that hill was a field. Sometimes I’d walk to school across that field. I don’t know if it really was a shortcut, but I thought it was. The alternative was to take the sidewalk, turn the corner then walk the straightaway to school. I remember when the wind used to whip across that field. It was so strong and cold I’d turn my body away from it and walk backwards. My jacket would billow. The cold would blow up my sleeves. It made me shiver. I stopped taking the shortcut on cold, windy winter days.
I remember listening on snowy mornings for the fire alarm to blow the signal for a snow day. I remember cheering when it did. What I don’t ever remember having was a day too cold for school. There were no school buses so we all walked. Some kids even walked as far as a mile.
We were the bundled generation. I lost track of the layers my mother made me wear. The only part of my body exposed to the cold was my face. My cheeks and nose turned red as if chaffed. My eyes teared from the wind. My nose ran. I had no tissues. I just had my mittens.
Chicken noodle was my favorite soup, Campbell’s chicken noodle. I’d eat the chicken and the noodles then I’d add crushed Saltines to sop up the soup. The top of my bowl was all soaked Saltines. I’d have to wield the spoon carefully or the Saltines would slip back into the bowl with a plop and a spray.
My mother always made pea soup after she’d serve bone in ham for Sunday dinner. My father and I loved her pea soup. She would always freeze some for me. I remember with the last batch she ever made she froze my soup in a Tupperware container with a blue top. I kept the container in my freezer. After my mother passed away, I still didn’t eat it. I wanted to save that soup. I wanted to save the taste, the memory. Finally I defrosted the soup and had enough for a few dinners. Every spoonful was a gift from my mother.
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February 19, 2025 at 9:49 am
When we were kids in the 50’s it was an exceptionally warm decade here in Texas. Then the late sixties brought a cold we weren’t used to. I was born at Dow AFB in Maine and remember my first two years there as a baby. The snow was piled up against the windward side of the house and my brothers carved out a snow cave. They had to crawl in but I could walk. I still remember the looking up at the crystal whiteness of the tunnel. The reason I have memory of being a baby is because I died when I was born. I caught my umbilical cord between my head and mother’s cervix and cut off the blood supply. My mother went to the base hospital and the surgeon couldn’t find a heartbeat. Alarmed, they decided my mother needed an emergency c-section but there was no obstetrician. They had to call in a qualified OB from Penobscot county along with his nurses in the middle of the night. I was without a heartbeat for several hours. But somehow, like a child drowned for several hours who is revived, the OB revived me. I was blue as cobalt. I was totally aware after that. I still remember being in the crib, learning to walk, learning to talk. I was always telling people about God and how they needed to be good to each other. When I was about 14 months old they took me to church and my oldest sister told me, “This is God’s House.” I laughed and said. “That’s not God’s house.”
Anyway, back to the 60s cold… My Uncle Raul had been a Seabee in the South Pacific constructing airstrips. At one location they had captured a Japanese airfield with a bunch of fancy stuff. One of his prized pieces of loot was a Japanese pilot’s flight suit. It was a fleece lined set of leather coveralls with fur at the collar, wrists, and ankles. It fit a 16 year old boy perfectly. I was warm as toast on the coldest days but It caused too much of a stir at school and the principal banned it. I still wore it everywhere else until it stank so badly my Mother banned it.
February 19, 2025 at 6:09 pm
Beto,
I have always lived in Massachusetts except for my two year Peace Corps service in Ghana. Winters here were always cold. I remember making a snow cave in the snow piled by the plows on the side of the road. We wiped the snow with water so it would freeze. I remember eating lunch in our cave. Because it was ice, it lasted longer than any other snow piles.
August is the worse summer month. It is hot and humid. Luckily, though, the cape suffered less than the rest of the state.
The story of your birth is the most amazing one I’ve ever heard about. That you remember so much is even more amazing. I have memories back to when I was two or three, but I have only a few memories.
I have seen pictures of Japanese pilots wearing similar outfits. I remember the hat they were wearing the most. You could see the fleece.