When I was five years old, my twin sister and I were left in the house at this time of year. It was winter and the weather in Minnesota is cold and snowy, in case you ain't heard. In fact, only Alaska gets colder.
My Dad was a dairy farmer and he would be in the barn. Minnesota winters are too cold for dairy cattle to be outside, so they would be in the nice cozy barn for the winter, which meant the barn needed to be kept clean. Having 35 cows in their stalls, hay and grain went in the front, milk came out the bottom two times a day,and shit out the back, which needed to be removed from the gutters behind these bovines.
Not yet being in school, we were left in the house to do whatever. There were the usual rules: wash up, get dressed,wait for your Dad to come in from the barn. He was usually done with the morning milking by 8 am. Our mother was a registered nurse at the local hospital and usually worked the 7-3 shift in the winter and the 3 -11 shift in the summer, so she had been long gone.
They got up at 5 am, and after they had breakfast, she drove five miles to the hospital. He went to the barn. After my dad cooked us oatmeal, he would fry a half dozen strips of bacon he cut from a slab, in a big black skillet, then the potatoes and eggs would be cooked in the bacon grease. Along with two large pieces of toast, he would wash it down with a pot of coffee, along with 3 -4 non filtered or home rolled cigarettes. This was his breakfast for 60 years- he would die at 82 while getting ready to go to his weekly poker game.
The old house was built after the Civil War. It was heated by wood which was stacked on the porch, usually a week's worth. He would stoke the fire and tell us to play quiet while he took his morning nap. Up at noon, he would make us lunch, get the mail, play a few hands of cribbage with the neighbor lady who came after her mail. He would prepare the evening meal and place it in the oven after he had baked ten loaves of bread. My Dad could cook and bake anything having cooked in the lumber camps around International Falls, where those cooking had to be good or were quickly replaced.
Usually in the mid-afternoon, we would take our naps. On this particular day neither one of us were sleepy, so we explored the walk-in attic. This attic held wonders: old clothes, antiques, a Civil War musket, old pictures oflong deceased uncles and auntys, and the wonder of all, Santa Clause's suit along with boots, hat and beard. What did this mean? Our Dad was Santa? We couldn't ask him as we were forbidden to enter this
room. We made the decision to be quiet, figuring Xmas was coming and having been told to be good or Santa Claus wouldn't stop at our house.
Back in the day, Minnesota seemed to have blizzards that would leave 4-5 feet of snow, stranding the rural population. The township had a cab-covered D-8 Cat with a huge plow with wings. This Cat was used to plow all township roads and farmers driveways. Usually it got to our farm about midnight while we were fast asleep in our beds. Anyhoo, a Cat D8 is a huge tractor that, when pushing snow, snorts, rattles our house windows and shakes the ground. Looking out the plastic covered windows from our upstairs windows we watched this monster stop below and Santa Clause jumped from this monster and entered our house. Scared, we both jumped back in our beds. We listened to our parents. They had made ol' Santa coffee, and then we heard him yell over the phone, “I'm at The George Earley Farm! This is halfway, I'm turning around, will be back in
three hours. Having plowed out every driveway, I can make good time now.” With that, Santa left in the yellow monster with the box on top. Looking in the attic, there hung the red suit.
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