When trying to decide which adventuresome trip I should share with my readers each month, I tend to overlook the little ones. Those seemingly insignificant jaunts sometimes contained a sparkle that has clung to me like a warm glow over the decades.
As kids on the farm, we turned our nearest neighbours into stand-in grandparents. So Mom and Dad’s best friends, John Jensen and his wife, forever became Grandpa and Grandma Jensen. We didn’t get out much in those years during Dad’s illness while mother struggled to raise us alone, so when Grandma and Grandpa Jensen asked us to join them for supper and a visit to their son-in-law and daughter’s place, we happily went along.
After eating, we all piled into Grandpa’s tiny horse-drawn van to travel in the winter darkness the mile-and-a-half across the fields to the young couple’s farm. The little van would run along easily on sleighs behind the team – even on the deep snow that had fallen in the last few days. A stove the size of a gallon paint can would keep us warm. Grandma Jensen in her thick accent asked Grandpa, “Think you can find de vay, Yonny, in the dark and snow?”
He just laughed, “Vat are you saying voman? Get lost in my own fields?”
Then he hooked two big alligator clips onto a car battery by his feet. An old Ford headlight fixed on the roof of the van cut through the night and illuminated the way ahead. “Get lost vit dat?” Grandpa said. “No vay.”
We left the house, drove past the barn, and slid merrily out the back gate with sleigh bells jingling and snow crunching under hooves and runners. After a few minutes Grandma said, “Shouldn’t ve have reached de east fence by now, Yonny?”
“No,” Grandpa answered. But soon he pulled up the team and stared out the tiny window in the front. The rest of us couldn’t see much of anything. “Funny, someone’s been trew here by sleigh recently. Who’d be driving around in our field? Must’ve been the Etty boys getting a load of straw; I said they could take vat dey vanted.”
Grandpa chucked-up the horses and we went on for a few more minutes before he stopped again and said, “Look at dat. More tracks going de other direction. These tracks look even fresher. The boys must be lost out here. Maybe dey’ll see our light and follow us.”
In another five minutes Grandpa stopped again and said, “Ve just crossed more new tracks and now ve’ve come to a fence but there shouldn’t be a fence here!”
“Just sit tight Yonny,” Grandma said as she manoeuvred her rheumatic legs through the door at the back and eased herself into the snowy night.
We waited in the silence; those of us who managed to peek out the little window saw her shadow moving along the fence. In minutes, she put her head back in and said, “Yonny, ve’re up against de nort fence. You’ve been driving in circles and crossing your own tracks. Follow me.”
Another peek out the tiny window revealed that wiry, tough, little Scandinavian grandmother walking in the beam of the headlight.
She took us through knee-high snow banks, across ankle-deep fields, and straight to an exit gate and a lane on the far side. When Grandma got back in she never reproved her husband, just said, “Ve’re okay now Yonny.”
Sometimes the tiniest of life’s adventures leave us with the biggest memories.