The House Full of Sawdust
The House Full of Sawdust
Why does a memory come to you from nowhere? Quite often for myself a song will bring a memory back to mind. Not sure what made me think about the house full of sawdust today, but I’m thinking because it’s hot out. This story goes back to the very early ‘60’s. Depending on your age a lot of people will have no idea what a house full of sawdust is.
Many years ago - I was going to use many moons ago, but it would be a lot of moons. Lol. So here is what I remember about the house full of sawdust – an old small building, made of wood, 4 walls, a roof and a doorway. It was half full of sawdust chips, that were used as insulation to keep it cold inside.
I would have been a young child when we had our house full of sawdust. We did not have power yet or deep freezers. Therefore, any food you needed to keep cold or frozen in the spring/summer months was kept in the house full of sawdust and ice blocks from the river. Someone would come to the farm in early spring before the ice had gone off the river. They would bring big blocks of ice and they would be placed inside the house full of sawdust. My grandparents had one of these houses too. These houses were really cold inside. In the summertime you could keep food preserved by placing it inside this house. Our parents would bury food into the depths of the sawdust and food would stay cold, unspoiled and readily available to eat. I’m not sure how we found all of the packages or if we did.
Throughout the week I remember walking out to the sawdust house with one of my parents and picking out some meat to have for supper. It was like a game of hide and go seek or where’s Waldo, but where’s the meat?
But, here is the best part. There was no air conditioning back in the ‘60’s. You could cool off in your basement during the daytime, or swim in a horse trough, and last but not least swim in the slough. What was the absolute best way to cool down? Go to the sawdust house. It was so cold in there. The ice would stay in their ice block forms for a couple of months. You couldn’t really play in the sawdust house, but you could relax and cool down. A little piece of heaven. However, your parents were not very fond of you hanging out in the sawdust house as your body heat would help the ice to melt, therefore stopping the preservation of the food stored in this house.
One day my sisters and my cousin were playing at my Granny’s house, it was a very hot Saturday afternoon. Of course, one of the rules was to stay out of the sawdust house. My Granny was the nicest grandparent a child could ask for; she just let us do what we wanted to do. However, the sawdust house was off limits. But we were so hot that day! And we looked at each other – do we break the rule? Granny is having her nap. Can we go into the sawdust house and cool down? But Granny said that was the one thing we couldn’t do. Well, my cousin finally just got too hot. He had to go in. And so, he did. He climbed into that sawdust house, and we watched him cool down, dance around and taunt us to come join him. And we are like – do we? But Granny had said no. So, as we watched him enjoy this cooling moment in life, suddenly we heard the screen door bang - oh no - Granny was up.
Well, the first thing she did was come and check up on us. When she saw my cousin in the sawdust house, we all got marched up to the house and were given the “talk” once more on how we don’t go in the sawdust house. And then she reprimanded my cousin. I had never seen my Granny spank anybody. So of course, I was shocked. I had been spanked by my parents, but never by my Granny. This is the one and only time that one of her grandchildren got disciplined that strictly. And it would have been a teeny, tiny slap on his backend. But, from that day forward we knew if Granny said don’t do it, we didn’t. We had such respect for our elders. They loved us to the moon and back and we did too. Grandparents - hugs and kisses - the best people who helped to raise us.
If you’re a grandparent - just love them and enjoy your time with them. Praise them and let them know they can be anyone or anything they want to be. Tell them to dream big, help them make that dream come true. Encourage them in this crazy world of life. Let them know they’re special and always have an ear to listen to them. You may not have the answer they’re looking for, but they will appreciate you just listening.
