Applesauce Footprints, part 1

I have taken two Christmases from my Missouri childhood and combined them into a fictionalize story. I have changed the actual names of persons and places, except for the true characters of the story: War, Hard Times, Love, and Christmas in my gift to you,

Applesauce Footprints

The fresh covering of powdery whiteness sparkled in the late afternoon sun. It covered other snows that lay one upon another; each filling hollows where many feet had left indentions.

Stamped upon the brittle crust were the small prints of children who had trudged to school. The pattern was reversed by their return. Interwoven among these elfin-sized hollows were those of a dog. They had been imprinted by the old wolf-dog that had roamed the neighborhood ever since his owner had put on a uniform and left for a war in a place far away from this small northwestern Missouri town. The young man who had raised the wolf-dog from a pup was in Korea, fighting a war these children understood little of.

The wolf-dog stayed here because this was home, and because the children were generous with morsels extracted from secret depths of pockets and tin lunch pails.

Sometime during the dawn-streaked hours Old Man Watson had shuffled by with his amber treasure trapped in a glass bottle trussed up in a twisted paper sack. The old man’s staggered footprints followed him out to Poor Town where his diluted dreams lived in a tarpapered shack. Sometimes the wolf-dog followed these footprints. It was Old Man Watson’s son who had put on the uniform, escaped poverty, exchanging it for war.

Along this slick path were also the grown-up lady prints left by Mrs. Tucker as she picked her way towards the factory where she worked twelve hours a day, six days a week. She had done this ever since Mr. Tucker had taken ill and could not work.

Often paralleling Mrs. Tucker’s prints were those of her eldest daughters. One daughter was grown, the other nearly so. The eldest girl had already completed school; the other had paused in her studies for a year. The two girls worked beside their mother, both helping to keep the family together with their meager pay.

The trampled snow around the corner on Main Street sparkled. It reflected red and green and silver from the bright tinseled decorations and wondrous toys displayed in the window of Bent’s Five and Dime Store.

From down the street drifted the fragrant smells of warm fruits and cinnamon that compelled chilled noses to stop and inspect cakes and pies at the bake sale in front of Margin’s Grocer.

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