MUM’S mad. This morning my dad and a bunch of his pals came home with some Scotch whisky to celebrate the New Year. So Mum and Jimmy harnessed the horses to the sleigh and took us up to Indian Meadows. It’s six miles up into the mountains where Uncle Tommy and his family live on a little ranch. Yay-yah lives next door. Uncle Tommy is Mum’s brother.
It was about noon when we left Joyaska Ranch. Mum bundled us all up nice and warm in two pants and sweaters each and warm winter coats. We put on thick wool socks and gumboots, hats and scarves. Then Mum told Jimmy to put dry hay on the sleigh and she put blankets over it. The hay smelled sweet. Mum told us to sit close to each other, and she put wool blankets over us. Mum and Jimmy sat in the front seat taking turns to drive the horses.
The sun was sparkling on the snow. We saw little snow birds flitting among the fir trees and all kinds of tracks in the snow, rabbit tracks, bird tracks and even deer tracks. We passed people on the road and they waved at us, smiling because we were riding a sleigh. Most people were driving cars. As the horses trotted along we sang Jingle Bells, Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, then some Christmas carols. We didn’t feel cold, but our noses were all red.
It was just getting dark when we got to Uncle’s log house. My cousin Sonny was packing water when he must have heard the harness jingling. He looked at us smiling for a minute. Then he went inside to call Uncle. He told his dad, “Looks like Mrs. Santa and a whole bunch of Rudolphs just pulled in from the North Pole.” My uncle and aunt and Yay-yah came out smiling and looked at us for a moment.
“Where’s Frank?” they asked Mum.
“Drinking at the house,” said Mum.
Uncle’s eyebrows went up. “Ohhh,” he said.
“Well, come in,” said Aunt Ella. “I’ll make you some tea and thaw you out.” Tea was grouse soup, deer roast, dried salmon, mashed potatoes, mashed turnips, macaroni, rice, gravy, hot biscuits with butter, fruitcake, canned peaches and huckleberry jam.
While Mum and Auntie and Yay-yah were cooking, Uncle and Jimmy went out to put the horses in the barn and feed them the hay that Mum brought. Now Mum and Aunt Ella are doing the dishes, and Dorothy is sitting on Uncle’s bed telling stories to the little kids, Benny and Missy, Annie and Mary May. Uncle, Jimmy and Sonny are packing in wood. Every time they open the door a cloud of steam leaves the house. That means it’s really cold outside. Uncle told us we might as well spend the night, so we are.
Me and Yay-yah are sitting at the table near the coal oil lamp. The radio is playing an Elvis song, Are You Lonesome Tonight. Yay-yah is mending a pair of beaded gloves. She looked at me over her spectacles for awhile and watched me writing. I told her I’m writing a story. She chuckled and went back to her sewing.
I like Uncle’s house. It’s one big room with a loft upstairs for Sonny. It has a black and white cookstove, a big heavy table made out of planks, heavy benches and two double beds at the far end of the room. There’s thick wooden pegs for coats hammered into the logs beside the door, and a plank above it for putting hats. Mostly all the men around here wear cowboy hats, except when it’s freezing cold. Uncle’s war medals, guitar, rifle and scabbard are hanging on the wall above his bed.
Uncle Tommy is a deer hunter and a sharpshooter like my dad. Sometimes to practise target shooting they hammer a nail partways into a log. Then they stand from a hundred yards away and drive the nail in by shooting it.
Uncle told my mum we could stay as long as we like. I think we’ll stay a couple of days and then go home, when Dad’s finished partying. When we get home he’ll have the house nice and clean and he’ll buy a big bunch of groceries.
In the meantime we’re going sledding tomorrow at the little hill at the end of the hay field. Sonny and Jimmy and Uncle are going riding, which means they might hunt. The ladies will visit and cook and tell stories.
I hope Uncle plays his guitar after. He sings western songs, him and Aunt Ella together. She has a high voice. I like the way they sing Forever My Darling. Later when it’s midnight, Uncle and Sonny and Jimmy will go out and shoot in the New Year. Then we’ll all sing Old Lang Syne and it will be 1959. Imagine, 1959! I hope I can stay awake for it.