A Tube Fire Escape And A Little Girl In The Dead Of Winter

 Grandma Lu found herself walking aimlessly from her living room to the kitchen glancing out the windows to see if she saw any snowflakes fall. She loved the age of electronics and had many little gadgets about her home. She could see the temperature outside and the Echos all seemed to be telling her the same thing; the weather forecasters seemed to be right!

She and her husband and most of the folks in her small town had been hearing the same thing; a big snow storm was on its way. "Years ago I moved from my home state to have warmer weather. What do I get? A snow storm. They are saying 6-14" Well, six inches is a lot better than fourteen inches. Mercy. I told my husband to make sure we have a shovel and ice melt by the door so we could get out if we needed to without breaking  a hip or worse.. Oh how I hate cold weather anymore. I wonder if he got back up propane and we had better let the water drip in the sinks and open up the cupboard doors tonight before we go to bed. Oh look at that temperature drop! Seven degrees! Good grief. They are saying below zero tonight. Might as well live in the Dakotas or Iowa for this terrible cold weather."

Grandma Lu found herself going to her little room she called a pantry, but it didn't have food in it. They used it for storage of things they never used. "Someday I am going to throw away half of this stuff. Oh where did I put the candles and the oil for the oil lamps? Oh here it is. Half full. Well, that's better than nothing."

She walked back to the living room and sat down in her comfy old rocking chair. She looked out the window and there they were; snow flakes. She looked at her little gadget and thought, "Boy, my dad would have loved these gadgets. He loved radios. I swear he had one in every size and shape. Oh no. Fran! Look it is below zero already and I can barely see across the road."

"Well, there is nothing I can do to change Mother Nature's mind about this so I might as well sit here in my chair and enjoy the beauty of it all. She remembered Marleewood and how she and B used to go there all the time and she would tell stories and have such fun. Marleewood was closed now, but she had decided to write down some of her stories on her computer. Oh how her mother would have loved a computer. Well, her mother's cousin's granddaughter had read her story about mud pies and had mentioned the old tube style fire escapes on a school that she had attended. "I think our whole family went to that school. I remember those fire escapes too. They were such fun. On fire drill days we would slide down them to the outside playground to be safe from the Pretend Fire.

 "Oh my goodness. I remember when I was in first grade. I remember Rosemary. She was such a pretty little girl. She had really dark hair and it was always fixed in long curls. That was the style in those days. Oh it was so cold that day. We were all out for recess. There were snow flakes falling that day too, only they weren't pretty. They were little and the wind made your face hurt when they hit you. The temperature was way  below zero, but the teachers thought it was good for us to be outside for a bit every day. Some of us thought it was too cold and started to gather closer to the school house where the fire escape was to get out of the wind. I can see Rosemary plain as day reach out with her tongue to gather up some snowflakes that were on that fire escape. Then she started screaming, but she didn't move! Oh mercy what a commotion. Her tongue was stuck to that fire escape!

Teachers started gathering around her It seemed like forever when one came running to her with a cloth and a bowl of hot water and kept dabbing at her tongue and shushing her to quit screaming and squirming. Oh my what a day that was. The teachers finally got her loose and we were all made to get in a straight line and get back into the school. Each teacher I am sure gave their class the same lecture. Don't ever put your tongue on a freezing piece of metal!

Grandma Lu smiled as she remembered that little girl as she grew up. She had the most beautiful singing voice. At a school music special when she was a teenager she sang a solo. The song was called  Orange Colored Sky. A most memorable performance to last so many years later.

She looked out the window and thought, "I hope that snowblower works after all these years. I think he is going to need it."