Photo by Sara Codair on Unsplash
Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper braves the risk of ridicule in bringing up the FACT that he and his sister and brother walked a mile and a half on a country road to a one-room country school, even on mornings like this one when they were wrapped in coats and scarves by a concerned mother and sent on their frigid plodding way.
The morning walk was often into a west wind and cresting some of the hills meant walking backwards until the cold knives of the day could be tolerated. There was never any traffic and the chance for a ride, and there was no handy place to stop in and warm up.
The last half mile was across flat fields where the wind celebrated with unobstructed fury and aggravated the keeper’s painful sinus headaches, but it also put the schoolhouse in view so there was a sense of an ending to the freezing misery.
On this morning of an intolerable windchill factor–a measurement that had not yet been established, the keeper messages his sister Norma and brother Orville to share the speculation that those winter morning walks to school may have caused permanent brain shrinkage and the keeper is wondering if it is too late to sue somebody–maybe Mom, for damages?
Mom would understand.
