Bits And Pieces

An Old Pair Of Gloves

     The gloves were old, the leather was torn and in places, the fingers mended; but they were fur lined and warm--and they were my snow shoveling gloves.

     How many places had I worn them?  They traveled with the snow shovel from the last World War years to this present snow storm.

     Every time I slip them on my cold hands, pick up the snow shovel and tackle that white stuff on walk or drive, I keep remembering other times and places I'd worn them.

     The gloves started out new and leathery smelling.  A special pair fashioned from the hide of a deer my brother-in-law had killed.  They were soft and supple with a grayish white bunny lining added for extra warmth.

     Those gloves felt mighty good to chilled fingers in that twenty-six below zero temperatures of middle Iowa.  Snow and wind blew across that flat, corn growing country and restlessly deposited drifts in new spots nearly every night.

     In those days gloves were marked for dress-up wearing--for those jaunts into town where fashion wasn't as important as warmth.

     The first New Years day we spent in the friendly, little town of Fort Dodge was similar weather wise to that memory week-end a few weeks ago, only this time it was heavy snow that bent trees and took down power lines.

     We'd invited another young couple for dinner but when it snowed and the wind blew and the temperature hit in the negative degrees roads were blocked and telephones put out of order, we figured our guests wouldn't make it.

     But they did; each on snow shoes.  They'd walked and were half frozen, but we were all young and that was fun and something to talk about for weeks to come.

     My gloves went home on my friend's hands that night, taking the place of some light mittens that froze her fingers on the way over.

     They were worn ice skating that year and found their way into the closet to be called upon for any winter, outdoor frolic.

     They helped make the first snowman for a small daughter.  And they appeared with the heavy clothes in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts where we spent a war year.  In this portion of Cape Cod that gets picture card beauty with winter snow, I wore the gloves shoveling a ton of coal a week into a gasping converted to coal, oil burner furnace in the cottage we rented.  The gloves darkened with age and dirt, but warmed chilly fingers when gas rationing had us walking along a chilly ocean.

     The gloves turned up in a winter coat pocket when I spent two war years at home.  They helped me shovel walks in Ohio while Pop slugged up the coast of Italy.

     Putting the gloves on my hands those years brought back memories of times before an ocean separated Pop and me.  They warmed my hands but didn't help a bit with a lonesome heart.

     Back to Fort Dodge and daughter and I batching it a few months.  There the gloves covered my inexperienced hands in changing recapped auto tires.

     But suddenly Pop was back and the gloves went with me on that cold four a.m. meeting of his train.

     I decided to retire the gloves when they became worn and stiff from tasting wet snow; but I couldn't quite throw them away.  They were still warm and slipped up just far enough to cover cold wrists, so I put them in a box of worn, but still good, heavy clothes.

     And there they stayed through the heat of months on a California desert and the mildness of an Oklahoma spring.

     It was like discovering a written diary that covered my life when several years and two more sons later I found the gloves.

     They were worn to initiate the trial run of our toboggan and reposed on a shelf in the garage.

     So they were on my hands during the recent ice storm, helping me move fallen, ice coated branches from the driveway.  Now it would have been a fitting end to their career if they warmed my hands in a heatless house; but we were lucky though, our power remained secure.

     However, the gloves are no more.  Fingers way beyond any mending split on that last contact with frozen branches and a below zero shovel handle when the car stuck in the driveway.

     I've new ones now that are prettier--probably just as warm--but somehow not as nice--they don't bring back any memories.

Written February 11, 1965