The Long, Cold Walk
Jan. 6th, 2009 06:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thisnewdayIt's a bit chilly in the house this morning. I must've been asleep when the furnace ran its last heating cycle and, given the condition of most things around here, the possibility exists that it really was its last. Then I remember that overnight temps were forecast in the teens and I relax a little. Really gotta insulate this place someday.
Not that overnight temps in the teens are really that cold. One of the winters I spent up on Muskrat Bay, on the south shore of Oneida Lake, the temperatures reached 26 below zero for several nights in a row. And on the north shore it was even colder. The morning after one of those, you always hope the battery in the car is good because it'd be a long cold walk to the nearest town. And back then, in my school teacher days, I couldn't have swapped out a car battery anyway.
Yup. It was a long and sometimes scary road on the way to knowing all the stuff I know now. I'm sure my parents, who struggled to get their three kids the college education they never had, weren't all that happy that it led through all the grimy little shops and night school classes I eventually took to get what they knew as a matter of necessity.
Still, having gotten it the hard way, I know it's really mine. Even though it means, because of the way I've chosen to live the rest of my life, that I'll live or die by it. Just like they did...
Not that overnight temps in the teens are really that cold. One of the winters I spent up on Muskrat Bay, on the south shore of Oneida Lake, the temperatures reached 26 below zero for several nights in a row. And on the north shore it was even colder. The morning after one of those, you always hope the battery in the car is good because it'd be a long cold walk to the nearest town. And back then, in my school teacher days, I couldn't have swapped out a car battery anyway.
Yup. It was a long and sometimes scary road on the way to knowing all the stuff I know now. I'm sure my parents, who struggled to get their three kids the college education they never had, weren't all that happy that it led through all the grimy little shops and night school classes I eventually took to get what they knew as a matter of necessity.
Still, having gotten it the hard way, I know it's really mine. Even though it means, because of the way I've chosen to live the rest of my life, that I'll live or die by it. Just like they did...
