milk macaroni in the room by the stove

In my little town
I grew up believing

That God keeps his eye

On us all

Simon and Garfunkle

In my little town, the town I grew up in, it is about 7 degrees below zero, the winds are blowing at 50 miles an hour and it is a blizzard. My mom says she can't see across the street. My sister didn't go to work which is a 12 mile drive almost to the shores of Lake Superior or, as Gordon Lightfood would say "The big lake they call Gitchee Gumee" in his song about the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. I sure wish I was there even though and maybe because my sister Barbara Jean said in her last text message "We are still here with our chooks on. It has not let up at all. Don't know if I will get to ma's today".

A "chook" is a term used by many folks in my hometown, for a knitted, often homemade hat that is much like a skull cap or a stocking cap (but not as long). It "panks" your hair down, which means, "makes it flat and fly away" so most people leave them on in the house. My sister does so out of necessity because it is colder in her house now than it is outside here. She burns wood and lives in an old house, that, as comfortable as it is, has no insulation. When the wind blows it blows right through the boards and the house shakes. It stands study though, because like the people who live back there, the houses are built to last. My grandma used to say my sister was "built like a brick shithouse". It might be so, since I think my sister is one of the strongest women I know.

B. Jean (as I often refer to her, making fun of those folks who use their first initial and middle name) and I have many fond memories of such storms in our old house. One time my mom got stranded at work and my brother and dad were snowed in at the grandparent's farm. We were snowed in too, but decided to take advantage of it. We cleaned the entire house and then trudged up to Borns, the only store in town, and bought steaks to cook for dinner. This was certainly a luxury. We sat in that old house and listened to the wind and kept the wood stoves burning. That house also was not insulated and it shook and swayed but withstood those winds. Empty now, it leans to the right but no more so than it always did. The snow would get so deep in the winter that my dad would shovel it so high against the house that we could jump out the second story windows. It felt like a cave on the first floor because you couldn't see out. I suppose this also served to insulate it a little better. The winter mornings were so cold that often our rides to school began with my brother repeating his mantra "pleaseGodmakethecarstart, pleaseGodmakethecarstart" as my mother tried to start whatever old car we had at the time. Maybe it was my brothers pleas or maybe it was luck, but most times it started and we got a ride.

Sometimes the only warm place in that house was the room by the stove. This was a room where the main wood stove was. Our name for this room was fitting since the stove was really the focal point and most important object in that room other than my mom's ironing board. Many mornings it served as a table for us while we ate our toast waiting to hear if school was cancelled. On cold evenings, especially when my mom was a little low on groceries, we would have our favorite dinner, milk macaroni, while sitting around the ironing board. We probably used it more as a table than to iron our clothes. I can still conjure up the smell of wool mittens, sizzling and wet from playing in the snow, drying on top of that stove. We had chickens and often when we had baby chicks, we would keep them warm for a while behind the stove. Many kittens started their life on an old flannel shirt behind that stove as well. I can still hear my dad shoving first the crumbled up newspapers into the stove and then placing the kindling on top of it to start the fire. He had to get up during the night too and throw another log on. My sister has names for the different kinds of wood. For example, "Goodnight wood" is the kind that will slowly burn all night.

To make milk macaron, just make the macaroni, drain, add a cup or so of milk, about 1/4 cup butter and salt and pepper and heat. We loved this meal, but my mom always felt bad about serving it to us. Sometimes we had baking powder biscuits with it. I have never been able to recreate this meal to my satisfaction....I guess it is not the same when you don't have a room by the stove. Memories from childhood can't really be recreated to perfection by adults.

It's no wonder that I love snow. It brings up many good memories for me of growing up with not much, but so much more than many of my friends current and past, who seemed to have more things. I have no memories of trips to Disney Land, or family vacations every summer in a station wagon, but I did have warm times in the room by the stove.