Looking Back

The other day I was sitting on my porch just thinking.  There was something about the feel of the sun and the warm breeze that made me think of my childhood, growing up in Buckeye, AZ.  What I was feeling this particular day was very nostalgic.  I was 8 again, and my folks needed ice.  So we all packed into the car and went 'downtown' Buckeye.  There was an old ice house there.  It got around 190 degrees (yes, I'm sure it was 180 to 190 degrees) in Buckeye in the summer.  We had an old cooler hanging off our house that tried to blow some moist air around, but besides that, we were pretty damn hot.  So you can imagine walking into this ice house.  Cool, kind of cold, dark and awesome.  It smelled good too.  It kind of smelled like new cooler pads my dad would put on the cooler every summer.  Anyway, we would get a block of ice and take it home.  My dad would wrap it up in newspaper and paper bags and it would keep for a day or two.  My ma would make ice tea, and sometimes we would make ice cream in the old wooden maker, the one with the crank.  Everything was so much more special then, because we were so poor I suppose.  I love thinking about those days.  And here I am so old I'm talking about the good old days.  Wow.