Winter in Huron County was both fun and aggravating. It got really cold and there were usually at least six inches of snow on the ground. When the snow froze there was a thick crust on top, so thick that horses could walk on it. One winter there was a blizzard and school was out for a whole week. The snow was about three feet deep on the road. Everybody was about out of food. Oh, the Fermans had some canned stuff but all the meat and most of the vegetables were in the locker in Elkton. Erv Bealman called around and said that he was taking a team and bobsled to Elkton. Did anyone need anything? He asked Jack to go along and help with the shopping. They were buying for seven neighbors.
When Erv and Jack left, the horses and the bobsled were riding on top of the snow crust. The problem was, the snowplow came while they were in town and so coming home, the shod horses slipped on the slick blacktop. Erv's blind gray almost fell in front of the Ferman's house. It was scary at first. If she fell she probably would have broken something and they would have had to put her down. But then it got funny the way she danced around to get her balance back.
The real problem was, if the main roads were open on Thursday, that meant the gravel roads would be open by Monday and it would be back to school. Millie's feelings were mixed. She loved school but there was this huge drift between the parsonage and the church over to the Craig's and with the crust on the snow, it was fun to sled down. Down the west side, you could go almost to the road. Some of the boys got a running start or someone would give them a push and then they went so far, they slid over the road, into and out of the shallow ditch and hit the fence. Freddy got a little scratch from a broken wire but it wasn't too bad until his mom saw it. "You could have put your eye out!" He didn't so why the fuss?
Most roadside ditches were not too deep. They were kind of "V" shaped but if the boys pulled up on the front of their sled as they hit the ditch, they usually could get out the other side. Sometime they couldn't and hit their heads on the frozen ditch side. Nobody ever broke their neck but there were some pretty sore necks and even some headaches. Lyle Craig called Freddy a sissy because Freddy thought ditch jumping was too dangerous. Freddy reminded Lyle that he'd never had a sore neck or a headache.
When they got back to school they found out that Suzy Marrett had come down with pneumonia. Some kids said they heard that she almost died because they couldn't get her to the hospital. Suzy was not that well liked but everybody worried, especially Millie. Suzy was a brat but she was one of them. With Mrs. Whitby's approval, the Elkton sixth grade Distaff Quartet had all the kids make get-well cards for Suzy. Otis Bailey drew a very ugly girl and the notation was, "Get Well But Not too Quick." The Distaff Quartet delivered the cards themselves. Elly Shooty's dad drove them over. He was the county Agricultural Agent and had a C card.
Suzy was Suzy, sick or well. It looked like she tried to be nice but sarcasm was too much a part of her. Her parents and brothers and sister were all really nice. Her parents didn't understand it. They thought they had treated Suzy as they had the other children. They had never heard of Alfred Adler but he could have probably explained it to their satisfaction. Irene Ferman thought he was full of baloney. Irene knew Suzy's paternal grandmother and the woman was a curmudgeon. Maybe that trait just skipped a generation.
With that week off because of snow, it didn't give much time to get the sixth grade Christmas program ready. Millie asked Mrs. Whitby if she could write a Christmas play. What with having been asked by Mr. Hood to head the preparation for the school Christmas program for the parents and then getting ready for her own family's Christmas at home, Mrs. Whitby was glad for the offer. She knew that if Millie was involved, it would be done well.
Actually, Millie collaborated with the Distaff Quartet. Millie had been thinking a lot about Gurta as Christmas approached. She was sure that Gurta didn't know if her dad was dead or alive. Millie knew how she would feel at Christmas time if she didn't know if her dad was dead or alive.
The cast of the play was just the Distaff Quartet. The whole class would sing in the program for parents. The play, presented the day before Christmas vacation started, was about a half hour long and was presented to the class and any parents who could attend. The details of the plot are not important. Indeed, there was no plot, just four girls venting their emotions. It was agreed that Millie should be Gurta.
For two months she felt that she and Gurta were almost the same person. Millie knew that she could not feel exactly what Gurta was feeling but they were both eleven-year-old girls and eleven is eleven if you're in the United States or Germany, isn't it? Millie did such a moving job of evoking Gurta's emotions and anxiety that when she walked off the stage, almost everyone in the audience had tears in their eyes.
The girls did a wonderful job of portraying anguish. In the play, Marlene knew her father was dead. She actually cried as she told of her pain. Carol's father had stayed in Berlin working as an aide to Hitler. Carol got a promise from the girls that they would not tell what she was going to say in advance. She then very surreptitiously said that her father thought that Hitler was crazy and that he was sure the war would be over soon. Elly's father had been severely wounded, he was home but could not work anymore and she very tearfully wondered what would happen to her mother, her little brothers and herself.
The girls had thrown their souls into their drama to the point that they had to leave the room, go to the bathroom and sob for fifteen minutes. Actually there were tears in every eye in the sixth grade room: girls, boys and parents. Only Otis Bailey had no tears and proclaimed loudly that feeling sorry for Germans was unpatriotic. He got no response other than a severe, "Otis, be quiet!" from his mother. That shocked everyone. Mrs. Bailey usually made an excuse for everything Otis did. The emotion of the play had even gotten to her.