Renfrew County magic shared when visiting neighbours
Posted Jan 14, 2010 By Mary Cook
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Tweet ThisEMC Lifestyle - It was impossible to measure the sheer joy I felt on the winter nights when we went across the 20 acre field to spend an evening with our neighbours the Thomses. Uncle Alec and Aunt Bertha's log house was much bigger than ours of course. They had many more children than were in our family, and Aunt Bertha often said every square inch of the old log house was put to use. So the home was always bursting at the seams when we visited them on a Saturday night.
From the time we got on the flat-bottomed sleigh, bundled like mummies against the freezing cold, until we arrived at their door, I tingled all over. If the moon was bright, the field took on a look of pure magic, as the snow turned into millions of diamonds right before our eyes.
When we pulled up to their house, Aunt Bertha would meet us at the door, always wearing a fresh bib-apron, and we went in to the wonderful smells of freshly baked buns and mincemeat pies. Father would unhitch the sleigh and take the horses into the stable so they would be kept warm while we spent the evening indoors.
The adults didn't take long to settle down to a rousing game of euchre at the kitchen table, and I looked for the heavy hand-slapping whenever Uncle Alec or my father took a trick. When they euchred Mother and Aunt Bertha, you'd think they had just inherited a hundred dollars!
The older boys often went to the barns to visit in the warmth provided by the livestock, or sometimes they settled in Uncle Alec's drive shed where there was a small pot-bellied stove. They only appeared later for the ample lunch, which they always seemed to know exactly when it was being put out on the kitchen table.
The older girls, including my sister Audrey headed for the parlour, where Velma and I were not allowed. And I knew the most delicious talk would be going on, about boys, and the other girls at the Northcote School...all of which Velma and I were not privileged to sit in on.
So we headed upstairs to a bedroom to play with our dolls and whisper about what we thought the older girls were talking about.
When we heard the dishes rattle in the kitchen below, we knew it would soon be lunch, which always turned out to be more like a meal. And the frivolity of the evening continued on as we ate big roast pork sandwiches, homemade pickles, cookies, slab cake, and the adults washed it all down with big white cups of green tea, and we children got ladles of milk from a pail on the bake table.
Whether it was from the blast of heat from the raging cook stove, the hour, or the bellies full of food, I would grow so tired I could hardly keep my head up, or my eyes opened. My sister Audrey would help me into my clothes and we would grab the blankets which had been tossed on the wood box by the cook stove to absorb the heat before we headed back across the 20 acre field.
I desperately tried to keep my eyes open as we headed for home. But the sounds of the runners of the sleigh, crunching on the snow, the occasional snorting of a horse, or the rhythm of the bells attached to the collars on the harness, I would soon be sound asleep with my head resting on Audrey, who sat with her arm around me so I wouldn't fall off the sleigh.
And then what I called simply another Renfrew County miracle would take place. I would have no recollection of pulling up to our little log house, or being stripped of my clothes, or being fed into my pyjamas. But I would waken the next morning in my very own bed! I had no idea how I got there, and I would rub my eyes and try to remember the events that put me there, but to no avail. And once again, I would put it down to just another bit of Renfrew County magic.
