SNOW

Joe Bakewell.

SNOW.

 

It’s snowing. We’re getting more than expected and it won’t end until after dark. I won’t get out to clear our cars and get the mail until tomorrow making this a weird sort of day; the kind I remember from my boyhood. “No School!”

Such days were also an opportunity to make fifty cents, possibly a dollar or more, shoveling driveways.

First, I had to get dressed; hand-down clothes and shoes; none of which fit. This may be starting to feel like a tearjerker, but it wasn’t for me. I was a happy, optimistic kid, a bit like MicCawber in ‘David Copperfield’. “Something will turn up.”

In getting dressed, shoes were my biggest problem. They were always too large and usually had a hole in the sole that I preferred to cover with a piece of linoleum but sometimes settled for cardboard (only good for an hour or two).

When I got home, tired and starving, my first priority was to hide my money before it was confiscated for booze. Next, I stuffed anything digestible into my mouth and changed into dry clothes.

Later, after supper. That might consist of white bread with some butter, sugar and hot milk poured on. I might get to listen to The Lone Ranger.

The next day, after school, I came home to find all my belongings had been searched. Had I hidden my money well enough?

Joe Bakewell.

https://joebakewell.wordpress.com/