Looking back on my childhood and comparing it with today’s society, I can only conclude one thing – there is no comparison. On top of growing up poor in an even poorer part of the country, my parents were two of the most frugal people I’ve ever known, which added to the lack of luxuries that existed in our home.
Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t trade my upbringing with anyone, but when I hear anyone today whining about the price of a hamburger at the local fast-food eatery or complaining about the quality of discount brand potato chips, I find it hard to muster a smile. You see, those things would have been luxuries in the Crownover home.
Everything I ate at home was made from scratch. The bread was baked in mom’s oven. The meat came from the smokehouse where it was either hanging from a rafter or buried under a layer of curing salt. Every vegetable came from our garden and was consumed fresh or retrieved from the cellar where it had been stored since it was canned last summer. The only drink you consumed during the three meals per day was fresh milk that came from our own cows. In the summer, we might make a pitcher of Kool-Aid if the folks were feeling benevolent that day.
There were no processed, ready-to-eat foods in our home and, unfortunately, that included any kind of candy, soda pop or ice cream. And, oh how I loved ice cream. I guess that’s why, to this day, I get excited about a big snowfall. For when I was a kid, a big snowfall usually meant a day off from school to all my classmates in the one room schoolhouse, but to me, it meant feeding cows all day long (still, better than going to school) and a huge bowl of snow ice cream that night.
After the day’s work was completed, and we had finished supper, mom would send me out to fill a big aluminum pan with the freshest looking snow I could find. I usually filled the pan with snow from the top of the well house, since it was easy enough for me to reach and yet, was still out of the range of the farm dog. By the time I came inside with the pan of snow, mom would already have the concoction mixed that contained fresh milk, sugar and vanilla flavoring. Quickly, she would start mixing in the frozen snow until it was thick enough to resemble store-bought, soft-serve ice cream. In my expert, 8-year-old mind, there couldn’t be anything that could possibly compare in taste and texture. It was delicious!
There were a couple of years around the time of the Cuban missile crisis where Mom refused to make snow ice cream. She had heard a report on the radio that snow might be tainted with radiation and didn’t want her kids growing an extra toe, but that fear eventually passed and we enjoyed the treat with every significant snowfall from then on. I even taught my wife how to fix the delicacy after we married and our sons got to partake of snow ice cream throughout their childhoods. They, too, thought it was better than “the store-bought stuff.”
I have to admit that major snowfalls today aren’t as exciting as they were when I was a kid, since they bring about the extra burden of getting around, calving out cows, feeding hay and chopping ice on the ponds, but I always know that the end of the day will bring a little extra treat – even to an old man. While most people just see snow, I see an endless supply of snow ice cream.
Jerry Crownover farms in Lawrence County. He is a former professor of Agriculture Education at Missouri State University, and is an author and professional speaker. To contact Jerry, go to www.ozarksfn.com and click on ‘Contact Us.’
