"The Rest of The Story"

Thankfully Cory left me a small opening for today's post with her omission of the "frozen tears" story. Obviously some of you are familiar with it but apparently it still holds a thrill for some of our younger readers and as such bears repeating one more time. So for those young fans and for those who have not heard it before, here goes.

First however I neeed to set the stage a little. A good portion of the formative years of most of the Rooyakkers clan took place in a small farm house in the township of West Luther just northeast of the town of Arthur, Ontario. I did not know it at the time(although I'm sure Cory did) but this little house was actually built of logs. Yah...I aint kidding! I grew up in a log cabin just like Abe Lincoln although ours was well disguised by asphalt siding. And at one time I believe there were eleven of us living in this very little house. Now that's not really relevant to the story other than to emphathize the lack of affluence in our lives. We were freakin poor, we just didn't know it!

Of course way back then country schools were still common and as such we would normally have gone to the one room school known as S.S.(school section)#4, or even better known by the attending students as Shit Shanty #4. That school was not much more than a kilometer from our house but in their wisdom our well intentioned parents thought we should go to the Catholic School in town to let the nuns and priests have a go at us....no pun intended(well maybe a little one) and also to provide the town kids an opportunity to laugh at the poorly dressed immigrant kids from the farm. To my knowledge there was no such thing as school bus service of any kind, or if there was it did not include special accommodations to get us off to the "mackerel snapper" school in town, which was probably 7 or 8 kms from our farm.

Fortunately Dad had a part time job working at the feed mill in that very same town and as such would drive us back and forth to school. It was especially nice in the morning because we would get there an hour early, just in time to go to mass...every freaking day of our young lives! Well except saturdays when we stayed home to drive our poor mother insane. I will admit that once they closed the country school and all our peers joined us in town, the difference in quality of schooling was very obvious. Again, none of that is really relevant other than to demonstrate that we were a very large family already, with very caring parents who none the less were over worked and understaffed to handle the task they set out for themselves, including their commitment to get us a good catholic education.

I must also tell you that Arthur and surrounding area was right in the middle of the snow belt, and cold winters with deep snow were commonplace. I clearly recall snow banks which if you climbed them would have allowed you to grab hold of the hydro lines and often dads pickup truck remained parked at the road because getting in the laneway was out of the question. And that's when this story starts to gain some relevance.

The part I don't remember from those days is how we normally got home from school since I recall that Dad only worked in town in the mornings, and so can only assume that he would come back to pick us up at 4 pm or so. Again I will have to defer to Cory to clarify this. What I do know is that for some reason on one cold winter day the normal transportation was going to be late(probably Dad had to drive Mom somewhere to give birth to Old John or one of the other nameless idiots) but whatever the reason, we were instructed to "start walking".

I assume I was the youngest of the group going to school at the time, so that would have made 4 of us, aged 6 to 10, heading home on the the Conn road, in a blizzard, with our cheap second hand clothes which certainly did not include anything we now know as a scarf, or a pair of snow pants! As Cory tells the story i was crying my eyes out and it was so cold that the tears froze to my cheeks. I don't recall the telling being a story as much about my suffering as about the extremity of the weather, but regardless the point is that whenever she told this story it was met by disbelief and usually loud laughter. While I have no memory of it myself, and indeed for many years counted myself among the unbelievers, I have now, through my own adult experiences come to give the story some credibility. Since I have taken up running I can confirm for you the plausibility of the "frozen tears" story. If your exposed skin temperature drops low enough, any kind of moisture including tears will indeed freeze on your cheeks.

So that's the rest of the story, and as much as I should leave it at that I cannot. I cannot because there is still one incredible, too hard to believe element to the whole thing.

No it's not the part about living in a log cabin, not the part about the mile high snow banks, not the part about going to church every day, not the part about walking 7 kms home in a blizzard, and not even the part about the credibility of tears freezing on a little kids cheeks.

I'm sure you've figured it out by now. Yes indeed! The very idea of yours truly shedding tears for any reason is simply beyond my imagination and I'm certain beyond yours. It must have been someone else!!

“He does not weep who does not see”---Victor Hugo

"Live to the point of tears.”---Albert Camus quotes

“Let tears flow of their own accord: their flowing is not inconsistent with inward peace and harmony.”---Seneca

love
peter