File: chappellella06-oh-wintertravel_M.mp3
Speakers:
EC – Ella Thomson Chappell
EC: And then I remember when I went to school, there's no snow plows then, and then we'd go through the field. They'd break a road with the horse and sleigh, and then they'd go and take branches off a spruce tree and put the branches here and there, so when another storm come, that the horse would know where to follow the road. And a horse was a very smart animal, and they would break the road and make it hard for their feet. And if they were going along in the snow and they'd get off that road and get down on the soft, they knew to get back up on the hard spot of the road although it was covered with snow, but a horse knew that. And I remember we lived about a mile from the school, and I can remember that my brother took the horse and sleigh and took us out to school, and the horse went home himself. He just went along across the fields and he knew how to get home himself. And that happened different times. So it wasn't so easy, and there was no paved roads then, and then in the fall after a rain, in the muddy roads, the horse got through and they'd make holes with their feet, and then it would freeze and we'd be walkin' home from school in the fall and we'd fall into these holes sometimes, where the horse had his foot, and then it was frozen. And then I can remember gettin' up out of them holes, and cryin' and tryin' to get home. We never broke any bones but we just fell into the holes where the horse's feet were. So such a change [from] the way we went to school to the way we go now. But I remember in the wintertime, they had a box sleigh. And if there was anything going on in the evenings, at the Woman's Institute, they'd have straw in the bottom of the boxes, and we'd all get in there, and they'd have these big buffalo robes made of fur, and we'd all sit down in the bottom of that and my father'd be up front drivin' the horse. And we'd be all in there and we'd go someplace in the evening. And that's the way we went, and we'd be all nice and warm. And then sometimes to have it warm for the children, they'd put a brick – Put the bricks in the oven and they'd heat them up warm, and then wrap them up with paper: the Guardian, likely, and then they'd put them in the bottom, so when we'd sit down in the bottom of the sleigh, you see the bricks would be there, and that helped to keep us warm. And then my father would have a fur coat, and he would stand with up his horse and do the drivin'. 'Cause it's quite a chore to get ready to go, to what it is now, to just go out and get in the car in the garage and go.