I Remember

by Abraham Lincoln

I remember rain hitting our tin roof;
And how windows rattled in the winter.
Shaking the grates filled the pan with ashes,
And made the stove pipe glow a cherry red.

I remember wind howling through window cracks
And powdered snow flying by, bending dry grass low.
How quick my feet got cold walking to the store.
And 1, 2 or 3 pairs of socks didn’t make my toes any warmer.

I remember coal slack, and how my mother worried;
Because slack could explode and send hot cinders everywhere.
She warned me many times; never cover the bed with coal slack,
Unless you want to burn the house down.

I remember how my fingers froze
Wearing cotton gloves to school;
The girls wore mittens and their fingers never froze.
Boys never wore mittens to school.

Boys wore Long Johns with a buttoned flap;
Girls wore long underwear with a slit in back.
Of course us boys never saw them on the girls,
But boys with sisters said they do.

And their flap was just a slit
That opened when they sat down.
Now that sounded pretty good to me,
If they had hole in front to pee.

Mrs. Starr, my English teacher, listened to me reading a story that I wrote for class. She critiqued my story while I stood in front of my Sophomore English class, embarrassed and red-faced; I was our class president and was elected by popular student vote and I had used the word, "raised" instead of, "reared." My country-school education (we had to start there and go through the 8th Grade before we were promoted on to high school) had never prepared me for words like this. I would always say, "She raised me" and at that time didn't know words like "reared."