life flounders below zero/ part 2

life flounders below zero/ part 2

fiction
Edward w Pritchard

Civilization is a good well, dry sorted wood for fire and an enclosed outdoor toilet. A cold spell is good for the well, it kills harmful bacteria and sweetens the water to have a spell of below zero days each Winter.

This winter though we worry about our well. It's twenty five below zero so we worry if the well will freeze and we worry if all the beneficial bacteria that keeps us healthy will all die off and we will pay the price next Summer.

Five days of sub zero temperatures and we haven't been to town once. It's too dangerous to let the Horse get over heated and then be out in this extreme cold. We have plenty of food and wood at the ranch but it's monotonous without store candy for the children and City whiskey paid for by the glass for the Men. The women are double busy in a cold snap. They work harder to keep the household's spirits up and to clean up after the men who drag in a mess each time they leave the house.

 Feeding the horse goes on twice a day as usual despite the temperature. Horses are finicky but they can stand the cold very well. They hate it when we give them a blanket to wear. Horses hate to drink well water too when it's below zero, maybe they know instinctively that all the beneficial bacteria gets killed below twenty below.

Everyone has a hundred ways of predicting tomorrow's Weather when it's well below zero. Ultimately everyone, even the children just hope and pray for warmer weather in the middle of a long cold spell. Sometimes it seems like it never will get warm again. We sit around and read all the old books over and over and then one of the women tries to get us all to sing. I just wander off and stare out a frosty window to the south and wonder where Spring is. I wish to see one more Spring bloom and hopefully not anymore winter sub zero spells of prolonged twenty five below zero weather.

It's confining being in a cramped house day after day in a cold snap but I always worry for those who don't have a snug house to stay in when it's below zero. Sometimes when I am wishing for Spring to return I hope that someone is thinking about others who have no where warm to rest when it's sub zero. I guess I can stand a few more sub zero spells in the Winters with me living in a snug house if others less fortunate can sleep outside under a blanket or two when it's twenty five below day in and day out.