For your reading enjoyment, we continue to publish Rambling Vines by the late Marylea Vines as she re-calls events and names of Corning folks from many years ago. We are currently in the year 1992

What do you remember most about Winter when you were growing up?

I remember how cold we used to get walking all the way from the East Side to the school… and I’m talking about before insulated clothing came along. Once we got to the school, regardless of how early it was, the janitor would let us inside and we would all stand around one of those old steam radiators, patting it to warm our cold hands. Sometimes I had gloves and sometimes I didn’t. Most of the time I didn’t. I lost so many gloves that mama would let me go without for a while so maybe I would appreciate the next pair, or she would make me wear brown jerseys that cost 10 cents a pair, instead of pretty gloves. If I did have gloves, half the time they were sopping wet and had to be dried out overnight on the floorboard underneath the heating stove… if they didn’t get completely dry I had to wear them anyway… Talk about cold hands, try walking across town in near zero weather wearing damp gloves!

We each had two pairs of shoes, our school shoes and our Sunday shoes… what really happened was when our Sunday shoes began looking pretty bad we started wearing them to school and got new Sunday shoes… and anyone wanting to start war in the camp could do so by slipping off to school wearing their new Sunday shoes.

If our feet got wet on the way to school they stayed wet most of the day, because at recess and at noon (most students had to walk home and back at noon) they got wet all over again. Not very many students had overshoes and boots back then and almost no one except the teachers had raincoats. There were a few umbrellas (bumbershoots) but even so, they would have done little good in a blowing rain.

Most of the youngsters wore sock boggins, pulled right down to their eyebrows, however a few of the boys had aviator-type caps with attached goggles, made out of some type of black imitation

About the worst part of Winter was those old long brownish colored, ribbed, cotton stockings… during the cold part of the Winter, girls wore the stockings pulled all the way up… except for the ones who never learned how to fasten them by twisting and knotting the top, (They were the ones constantly pulling up on their stockings), As Spring arrived the long socks were rolled to the knee and kept in place with either a garter or a piece of twine string or a string of material tied around the leg. As the weather got warmer, the socks were rolled to the ankle and left such a big roll around each ankle that everyone walked funny.

We all wore long johns which caused us to nearly freeze to death for a few days each Spring because when the long stockings were shed, so were the long underwear, leaving us wearing only about half the clothing we were used to wearing.

It was cold in our house in Winter, especially the bedrooms which were shut off during the day… we dressed and undressed behind the heating stove, then ran fast as we could to jump in bed and sink down in the featherbed to stay warm.

I also remember snow ice cream, home-made sleds, pouring water on the ground at night in order to have ice to slip and slide on the next day.

I remember that cars didn’t have heaters, and we had to cover up with quilts to stay warm when we went somewhere, and I also remember how we like to have sweet milk containing slivers of ice.

I remember the old furnace in the basement got the school on fire at least once each Winter and finally, about 1941, was the cause of the fire that destroyed the two-story brick building.

When I was a Second grader, the furnace was directly under our classroom and it was not anything out of the ordinary for the furnace to belch and pop and for smoke to come into the classroom through cracks in the floor. When there was a fire, they cleared our room first because the floors were a fire hazard waiting to happen after years of oiling. We had to march out the front doors, single file and across the street to the yard at the Polk residence for head count.

I well remember once time there really was fire and I was standing in Polk’s yard watching when I suddenly realized that I had sneaked out of the house that morning wearing my new Sunday coat and if that thing burned my life would be threatened because a lot of hard work had gone into getting that coat and I knew that I was definitely not to wear it to school. There was only one thing to do, run back into the school and grab my coat… when I rejoined the classmates our teacher Mrs. Wilson was fit to be tied up. Not only did she blister me right good on the spot, but she also stopped by our house after school and tattled on me… out came that old razor strap and it was awful around there for a while before things calmed down. Mama first gave me two whippings, one for going back into the burning building and one for wearing the coat without permission. That’s the day I also blurted out, “Wait until my daddy gets home, I am going to tell on you.” That was my worst mistake of the day. Mama said, “Well, I’ll just give you something to tell daddy,” and here she flew into me again with that old razor strap. But you know what… I learned three lessons that day… don’t ever go back into a burning building, don’t try to sneak around and do something you have been told not to do and don’t, for goodness sake, don’t sass!

I also remember that one of my brothers had croup all Winter every single Winter. Just let him go to coughing during the night and everyone got doctored. Here mama would come with a dose of coal-oil and sugar. Now that I look back, I can see why the whole family was sick at the same time… everyone (the sick and the well) got a dose of cough remedy out of the same spoon!

That’s about how it was, good times and bad, but some of the most memorable years of my life and I feel fortunate to have come along when I did to parents who didn’t have much money, but did the best they could to set examples hoping that we would grow up and become unselfish, hard-working, law-abiding citizens.