By Mitch Lee
It was the winter of 1975 and much too cold for my dog Mutt and me to venture outdoors. Instead, we snuggled on my wool-blanketed bed as I waded through the pages of High King, one of the stories in the Lloyd Alexander series of books.
The sunlight barely peeked through the eighth-inch coating of ice and frost on my bedroom window.
My brother poked his head in and asked if I would read aloud to him.
He hopped on the bed and it wasn’t long before I tried out every crazy voice I could think of as I switched from character to character.
Mutt moaned every so often when we got laughing.
It distracted us for a moment but before long we were back entrenched in the story.
Almost three hours went by before we both felt a bit hungry and went to the kitchen to see what we could whip up for lunch.
I made a fresh pitcher of grape juice from frozen concentrate to accompany some of my famous peanut butter toast dippers.
My brother was still too young to operate the toaster and not much good at spreading a knife filled with peanut butter on toast, so he watched the process while standing on a chair I had pulled over next to the counter.
We started dipping toast wedges in our glasses to see who could hold them in the juice the longest and get the wetted piece in our mouth before it fell apart.
The contest resulted in purple juice being splashed on the counter and running down our chins.
Mutt appeared to be very upset that she was left out of the game.
And because my brother and I considered her to be another kid in our household, I made room for her at the counter and pulled up another chair.
She enjoyed being one of the dunkers as much as we did, however she got distracted by the winter birds darting outside the window on their way to the feeder.
The three of us made quite a mess. We tried to clean up as best we could before making our way back to my room and under the blankets to finish our book.
Long cold days at Limekiln Lake were spent in our bedrooms creating far off worlds and entertaining ourselves.
I think some of our closest family bonds were built as we hunkered in for the winter in anticipation of the first spring thaw.
Mitch Lee, Adirondack native & storyteller, lives at Inlet. ltmitch3rdny@aol.com