Country Roads

It is chilly this April morning. I put on my pink fleece robe to go out and get the paper. It is a bright, beautiful, sunshiny morning.
Chilly mornings remind me of childhood visits to my grandparents' house in Tennessee. .
There was no central heat and air in their little house in the country. Grandma would get up early and rekindle the fire in the fireplace. We quickly got dressed in the morning and turned our backs to the fire to absorb the heat. Like many rural families they still had an outhouse. It was no picnic walking to the outhouse on a cold or rainy day.
Still, there was something so basic and so simple about those long ago days. I can remember Grandma kneading biscuit dough for breakfast and smell the strong coffee percolating on the stove. Grandpa would be puttering around outside, perhaps working under the hood of the car, or going fishing at the pond which was within walking distance. I went fishing with my parents, once, when a thunderstorm dropped out of the sky. I cut my leg on a barb wire fence trying to make it home through the storm.
The little house had a good view with fields and meadows in every direction. We played on the front porch and could see the storm clouds forming in the distance or the sun set in the evening. After a long, hard day of playing we fell asleep listening to the grown-ups talk in the front room, stepping gingerly across creaky floorboards.