The Red Sled

By William C. Larmore

During the winter of 1923 when I was seven years of age, Wapello County, Iowa, was suffering from especially bitter, searing cold. We tenant farmers in particular were actually unprepared for winter. The growing season had been dry, windy, and harsh with burning winds that stunted, or in most cases, destroyed the crops we were trying to grow on our already wornout land.

As for my family, because of a miserable growing season, we were in debt to the Farm Bureau for seed corn, borrowed in a futile effort to replant. Even our eight cows were not producing their usual amount of milk due to our necessary rationing of the major food supply, soy hay, another crop that had nearly failed for us.

Christmas time was fast drawing near, but few of us rural kids in the little Elm Grove one-room school near Dahlonega, Iowa, were making out long lists for Santa Claus. Our families were all dirt poor, but as everyone around was in the same shape, we didn’t know any better, so we didn’t let it worry us. All we knew was that on bad years like this one, Santa Claus seemed to be on the shag end of his trip when he got to us and just scratched off what little was left stuck on the bottom of his bag. So we appreciated the usual sock full of candy corn, chocolate drops, peppermint sticks and cashew nuts on Christmas Day.

Several days before this particular Christmas, Mama and I (I was an only child) had started making the house look festive and colorful. In the evening after I finished my chores and school homework, we would cut out colored paper strips and make bright chains out of them for the Christmas tree (which we cut on our land). The wind and snow might be howling outside cold enough to freeze the whiskers off a rag doll, but inside, we had it close, toast-warm and happy.

Dad usually helped us glue the rings into each other, but these evenings, he mostly elected to go outside, light the lanterns in the unheated smokehouse and be mysterious about something. We could hear him hammering and sawing on some project, but we were too buy with our paper decorations and making popcorn balls for the annual Christmas Eve party at the church.

The party at the church went well, although the weather had turned out to be a snappin’-snow-snorter. The gallons of hot oyster stew went with the crackers like a feast, and the box lunches were scrumptious— although there was no fried chicken because everyone had already eaten all but the egg-laying hens.

Dad, who was usually the first one in the door, very mysteriously turned sour on it and stayed home, probably to work on whatever his precious doin’s were. We griped at him a bit, but to no avail, and then, grumbling like chipmunks about how snotty he all of a sudden was, and at Christmas, too, we walked about a half-mile stretch down on our frozen up, almost impassable Highland Center Road towards the church and stopped in at our down-the-road neighbors, the Engles. Mr. Engle wanted us all to get in his old diskwheeled Maxwell touring car and ride the rest of the way, but it wouldn’t start. So, as we all had overshoes on anyway, we all walked.

Mr. Engle held his marvelous new gas lantern up to light the way over the icy, snow-filled ruts so nobody would slip and get hurt. Clara Engle, about my age, who never liked me anyway, kept elbowing me to make me slip so I would get hurt. So we had fun!

As I said, the party was great.

It was late night when we got home. There was a kerosene lamp lit for us in the kitchen, but the smokehouse was dark, and Dad had already gone to bed so Mama and I put out some presents for him. I had drawn him a picture, crayon-colored, of one of his favorite characters out of a James Curwood book, and Mama had made him a fuzzy, brown woolen muffler that was long enough to wrap around his thin little body.

While Mama was in the kitchen getting warmed up for bed, I got my special secret gifts for the folks out from under my bed, scooted into the cold living room where our Christmas tree was set up and placed them carefully under the tree. For Dad, it was a box of genuine chocolate cherries, his super favorite! For Mama, a wonderful pair of brand new, real leather gloves, which rich Uncle Ray who worked for the Morrell Packing Plant in Ottumwa had bought for Aunt Jennie sometime last year, and she didn’t like and gave to me for Mama on the sly. Now, it was all up to Santa Clause.

As I lay under the heavy covers in my unheated bedroom with my feet freezing and listened to the wind and snow whistle through the cracks of the old house, I didn’t feel like Christmas. I just felt griped. I was put out at Dad for not caring beans about us and on Christmas Eve, too!

I probably lay there awake for at least three minutes before I opened the window to let Laddie, my muchloved, buff-and-white old collie dog in, got the snow brushed off of him, and scrambled back into bed with my feet thawing under a warm, loving, hairy dog comforter and was fast asleep.

When I woke up on Christmas Day, it was near 5 a.m., chore time, and still snowing! I hopped onto the ice-cold floor, popped Laddie out the window before Mama came in and caught him, and then made a plunge for the living room and the welcome heat of the old isen-glass windowed stove. Dad had, thank goodness, already fed the fires in the stoves before he went out to the barn to start chores.

The oil-burning, reflector-type lamps were turned down, but I could see my Christmas sock bulging. I could also see Mama standing by something on the floor in front of the tree, covering it with her skirt. On her face was a peculiar expression, one which I would like to see on a human face any day of the year. It was a look of great love, bursting pride, and immense appreciation of a wonderful accomplishment done by a great man.

“William,” she said huskily. “Look at what your father has done! Merry Christmas!”

There on the floor in front of our scraggy little tree sat the most beautiful wooden, hand-made, redpainted, one-man snow sleds I had ever seen or ever will see! That was what Dad had been making in the freezing-cold smokehouse. The top and runners were, I discovered later, solid oak from a seasoned old board in the barn. The runner facings were from the metal stripping on an old wagon bed, polished until I could see my face in them, and the long, graceful bed was painted a bright, glossy red, obviously several handrubbed coats. It was beautiful!

I reverently carried it in my arms, or at least, I tried to do so, when I proudly marched out to the barn to join Dad in our Christmas morning chores.

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William Larmore lives in Marietta, Georgia.