THE HORSE AND BUGGY KNEW THE WAY


So now the horse is hitched and snoozing in his traces. Mom and my older sisters have what food we are bringing packed up. Mom has somehow done her primping during all this. Now comes the fun part, getting four girls into coats, leggings, boots, mufflers, hats, and mittens. Just picture a four-ringed circus in cold December and you get the general picture. That part of the ordeal hasn’t changed any in the colder climates, nor was it much different one hundred years earlier. No matter what the century, or location (Great Plains or wherever) kids still couldn’t find mittens, accused siblings of hiding boots, and more.

But at last, everyone is bundled up. Dad has come in and gotten all the packed-up food and stored it in the buggy. We’re all standing around melting from within. Mom is ready to shoo her brood out the kitchen door when the youngest, who is bundled up the tightest and was the hardest to bundle, has five unique words to say. “I’ve got to go potty.” Of course, we know who that youngest child was. She’s doing a little writing these days far from that old Missouri home.

Fifteen minutes it takes to unwrap the child. Then you take her out on the cold back porch where the slop bucket is. Never mind the outhouse for now. You hang on to her so she doesn’t slip and spill the slop, and wait while she does her business. And wait. And wait.

At last she smiles at you with a sweet, angelic expression that rivals the angle on the top of her grandparent’s tree and says, “I don’t have to go now.” You smother the scowl that is trying to creep across your near-frozen face and smile back. After all, this is Christmas and as soon as you get this child bundled up again its over the river and, well there wasn’t a river to cross, but the road did go through the woods.

At your grandparents house you jump in the middle of their featherbed with all your cousins. There is the heavenly sound of Mom out in Grandma’s kitchen stirring turkey gravy and singing Silent Night in her clear, high, beautiful voice. Dad and Grandpa are all ready in the throws of a checker game. Your grandparents, like your own family, have no electric lights, running water, or any of the other “necessities of

The copyright of the article THE HORSE AND BUGGY KNEW THE WAY in The Great Plains is owned by Mary Trotter Kion. Permission to republish THE HORSE AND BUGGY KNEW THE WAY in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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