Groundhog Day
Don Coldsmith
Monday, February 2, 2009
WHEN I was a pretty small kid, quite a few years ago, we were visiting relatives one winter day. This was on an old family farm near Mound Valley, Kan. My maternal grandparents were there for the day. Although Grandpa once farmed this place, they now lived in town and an aunt and uncle were on the farm.
Grandpa always reverted to type when he was on the farm, though. He’d be in and out of the house bringing in wood or corncobs for the kitchen stove or carrying water from the well. There was no electricity or inside plumbing.
It had started to snow a little and the ground was getting white. Grandpa came into the kitchen with an armload of wood, stamped the snow off his boots and tossed a casual question to the three or four youngsters there by the stove.
“Ever see any red snow?”
This stopped me for only a moment. I knew my grandfather pretty well. He was a tease, but he had one inviolable rule: He never said anything that was not completely and undeniably true.
My younger brother, not quite as sophisticated as I in Grandpa’s ways, swallowed the joke whole. Hook, line and sinker. “Where?” he hollered, heading for the door. He was prevented from opening the door just in time by various female relatives. They were not anxious to have the wintry blast come through the kitchen door.
My brother, you see, had realized that Grandpa always told the truth. He didn’t quite have the rest of it figured yet. He hadn’t noticed that Grandpa didn’t actually SAY there was red snow out there, but merely asked if we’d seen any.
There was another time, though, when he completely suckered me. We were at Grandpa’s that time and had stayed overnight. Breakfast was always wonderful there. Grandma made big fluffy soda biscuits about two inches tall — but that’s another story. This time we were eating biscuits and comb honey, with eggs and country sausage. It was February 2. We were talking about Groundhog Day, wondering if the little critter would see his shadow, thus deferring the coming of spring by six more weeks.
I’m never quite sure how that works when Feb. 2 is a partly cloudy day. What if a woodchuck on our place sees his shadow, but one a mile or two away doesn’t? That must take some pretty intricate timing.
Anyway, we talked about it for some time, there at breakfast, how that’s why Feb. 2 is called Groundhog Day. “And that’s why we’re eatin’ it,” said Grandpa casually.
“Eatin’ WHAT?” demanded my brother suspiciously.
“Oh, Daddy!” scolded my mother.
My sister started to gag a little, turned green, and pushed back from the table. She always gagged pretty easy, though.
“Well, it is,” Grandpa said defensively, his blue eyes twinkling as he took another bite of sausage. “Ground hog.”
My sister was in the bathroom by that time and it was apparent that we needn’t save any more sausage for her.
A lot of years later, I pulled the same thing on our kids. We had five girls, of course, and I managed to evoke the same “Oh, Daddy!” scolding from a couple of them, while the younger ones peered at their plates suspiciously. Nobody gagged or ran for the bathroom, though. Our kids had pretty strong stomachs.
Actually, sausage made from woodchucks wouldn’t be all that bad, I once tasted a roast woodchuck and it was pretty good. Sausage has undoubtedly been made of vastly worse ingredients many times.
See you down the road.
Author and columnist Don Coldsmith lives in Emporia.
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