ADJUSTING TO CHANGE - Opening Segment (Scroll down for previous chapters)     


     As I’ve already mentioned in a previous chapter, our family once lived in an old 1930’s farmhouse.  Our children were thankful it was only once.  It was a hands-on experience in pioneering.  They would have preferred reading about it in a history book.  

    The farmhouse provided our family with experiences that would last a lifetime, although we usually hoped they wouldn’t last through the end of the day.  It shaped us into the family we are today…afraid of old farmhouses.  

     I knew there would be challenges, but rugged individualism would pull us through each challenge.  Hopefully, we would find someone with rugged individualism. 

     During the first winter, we stayed warm by fighting for position around the woodstove.  When rugged individualism failed to show, we went in favor of whimpering and whining.  We couldn’t ignore the frost on the sofa.  We were living in an icebox.  Still, we were determined to hang on until our story of survival appeared in Reader’s Digest. 

     The challenges provided excellent opportunities for building character.   It would have been much easier building snowmen. 

     The farmhouse had few modern features.   Actually, I don’t think it had that many.  We were thankful it had running water.

     The kids learned many valuable lessons, which still cause them to suffer from bouts with depression.  They learned how to cut and stack a small forest for the woodstove, our only source of heat.  They also learned how to identify freezer burn on exposed skin; how to identify the different species of birds in the house; how to scrape enough frost off the sofa, to melt and use for bath water, and how to twirl a plunger like a baton.      

Check back soon...new segment coming.