From the files of Don Kirk…Part 2. A Big-hearted Hotel

My mother knows the family that owns the hotel, a nearby farm, the grocery store, and the grain elevator. A cousin owns the garage. That part of the family responsible for the grocery store and hotel, lives in the hotel. Their home covers the entire first floor. The wooden building is old, but well built. With loving care for more than 60 years, the hotel stays in good shape, very inviting, especially tonight.

We pull up in front of the wide steps of the spacious, covered porch that extends across the front of the hotel. A man comes out of double doors in the middle of the building. He crosses the porch and hangs onto the handrail as he descends the snow-covered steps. Cheerily greeting us, he helps carry our suitcases. My mom asks him if the phones are working, that she would like to call her parents at the Frederick’s farm. The man said that the phones are not working, but it is expected they will be sometime this evening.

Turning to my dad, the hotel host says he will open the garage door across the street so we can park the car out of the weather. I go with him to the garage where I see a couple of cars dripping snowmelt. We aren’t the only guests in the hotel tonight.

The large front room of the hotel rises two stories high. Spread over the wood floor are easy chairs, a couple of sofas, several tables with straight-backed chairs, and a variety of small, colorful, handmade rugs. A big table on the right side of the room is set for supper with white dishes and bowls, silverware, glasses, cups and cloth napkins. A smiling, aproned woman adds three more plates and chairs for us. Two large, kerosene, mantle lamps with white glass shades are on the table, already lighted and burning low in case the power goes out, which could be anytime.

To the left a couple of women and a man are working on a huge, wooden jigsaw puzzle. On a nearby sofa sits another man reading the Denver Post. Several bookcases cover the walls between windows. There are small tables at each end of the sofas and next to some of the easy chairs. These tables are stacked with magazines. I can see The National Geographic and The Saturday Evening Post lay on the table nearby.
A generous stairway rises from the center of the room to the second floor. A balcony extends right and left around three sides of the big room’s second floor. The second floor guest rooms project over the left and right sides of the floor below and are reached by the balcony. Homemade, welcoming Christmas wreaths hang on each door. Around the gallery is a sturdy, shiny, wood railing.

Blue Spruce And Supper
On the right side of the stairway a Colorado blue spruce Christmas tree stands tall, clear up to the balcony. Blue spruce doesn’t grow on the prairie, so this one must have come from the mountains. This tree has just the right number of lights and ornaments.
A huge, black, cast iron, potbelly stove fills the right front corner of the room. It looks a lot like the one we have at home except it is at least three times larger. A short stack of three polished steel balls decorates the top. The stove door, framed with polished steel, has a shiny grating that holds little windows made of isinglass. On one side of the stove a box contains firewood. On the other side sits a bucket of coal. Like our stove at home, this one can burn either wood or coal. Wood will burn in its own ashes but coal doesn’t do well. For good heat out of coal the stove needs a grate so you can shake down the ashes and allow more air to flow around the burning coal.

As we make our way to the hotel desk everyone smiles and greets us, wishing us a Merry Christmas. We sign in and are given a room on the left side of the balcony. Few people are traveling tonight so we get two rooms, connected by an inside door. I have my very own room with a double bed! Cheerful Christmas decorations are on the dressers of both rooms. Each room has a large window. A floor vent covered by a grate in each room lets in warm air from below. The shared bathroom is down the hall.

Supper is served so we go downstairs and find a seat at the table. We all bow our heads as the host says Grace, thanking the Lord God for the bounty on the table. Amen. The wonderful smell of coffee fills the air as our hostess pours for those who want it. My mother takes coffee. Dad and I choose milk. Water fills everyone’s glass. The roast beef is tender, juicy, and delicious. I make a big dent in my pile of mashed potatoes and fill it with the runny gravy. I plaster warm homemade bread with homemade butter. My mother mutters that my layer of butter should be slimmer than the bread. My dad just smiles. I use the bread to push the green beans onto my fork. A dish of cherries sits at the back of each plate. What a wonderful meal.

After supper we relax in the easy chairs and sofas, absorbing the warmth of the potbelly stove. It is ten degrees below zero outside. Somebody worries about their car in the garage across the street. Our host assures him that the big stove in the garage is banked every night to keep things from freezing.

An upright piano against the left wall of the big room invites a player. Our host asks if anyone can play hymns or Christmas carols. My mother says she can (in fact, she’s rather good) if she has some music. Songbooks are found and we spend the evening singing Christmas carols, talking, reading the magazines, and eating frosted Christmas cookies put out in a big bowl on the dining table. The north wind blasts thehotel, causing the building to tremble. Even though the first floor windows are six feet above the ground, snow drifts pile up five or six inches above the bottom of the north windows.

Several guests want to make calls, but our host tells us that the phones probably won’t be fixed until morning, if then. I don’t say it, but I’m not really sorry we can’t make it to the farm. This hotel is very cozy. There’s a warm fire. We had a terrific supper. The huge, brightly lighted Christmas tree even has a bunch of presents under it. I’m wondering who they are for when the hotel hostess, with her husband standing by, asks all of us to gather in front of the tree. When we are ready, she gets presents from under the tree, calls out our names and hands a present to each family. We can’t believe it! She tells us to open them. We do, and the boxes are full of homemade cookies. A snack, she says, if you get hungry in the night. My mom laughs, thanks the hostess and says that, for us, this trip is turning out to have two Christmases!

Around nine o’clock, all of us head upstairs. We snuggle into the cozy beds, serenaded by the howling wind outside. My only disappointment in the evening is that the electricity hasn’t gone off.

Prairie Snow
December 24, Christmas Eve, 1943, 7:00 a.m.
There is no reason to get up early. Nobody can go anywhere until the roads are plowed in all directions. The hotel host tells the guests that the state highway crews have been out plowing since the wind died down about four a.m. By nine, cars should be able to go east or west, but we want to go north. On a gravel road. I suddenly get anxious. Tomorrow is Christmas! I want to get to the farm. The host smiles and tells me not to worry. A county snow plow is working south on our road from Akron, 30 miles to the north. Even better, in about an hour, a plow will start north from here at Anton. We are invited to go along behind it.

We eat a good breakfast of ham, eggs, and fried potatoes, and go out to talk to the tall man driving the snowplow. He wants to know exactly where we need to go. My dad tells him we want to turn west on county road 26 and after one mile turn north on county road BB. We are going to the Frederick farm. He says he knows where that is and that he will run the plow around that section. He tells us the phones are working this morning and to call the Fredericks and tell them we are on our way.

At home, we have a modern telephone. To make a call, I take down the receiver and tell Central what number I want. But the phones out here in this part of the prairie are old fashioned. The phone is a crank phone. You take down the earpiece and put it against your ear. Then you get your mouth close to the phone. If the phone is on the wall and if you are too short, you stand on a chair. My grandparents will answer their phone on six rings. So you turn the crank two or three times and stop. Do this six times and they will answer. Of course, the phones in all the farmhouses on that line ring six times, too. Everyone knows everybody’s ring number. When the rings quit, people start listening in to hear what’s going on with the neighbors. As more people snoop on the call, the sound gets weaker and weaker. Finally, the person called has to shout for the eavesdroppers to get the heck off the line so they can hear their caller. Most people out here are good people and they mean no harm, so they get off the line. As they hang up, your caller’s voice gets louder and louder and you can hear them again.
My mother calls the farm. Grandma answers and is happy we are about to start north behind the plow. She tells my mother that granddad assumed that something like this would happen and that he got out his big Case tractor and is right now plowing their private road the half mile to the county road.

The big county snowplow gets going. My dad stays about 50 yards behind it. Our speed averages about 10 miles an hour so we should get to the farm around 9:30 or ten this morning.

The wind has died down but the temperature still hovers around zero. Our car heater keeps us comfortable. Heavy storm clouds spit fine snow. Wind blows most of it off the road. A plow is needed because low places in the dirt road trap snowdrifts. The plow eases into these and clears them with no trouble. Visibility is still poor and sometimes it seems we are making no progress.

Suddenly the plowman ahead of us honks his horn, blinks his lights and turns left off the main road. We follow, now only a couple of miles from the farmhouse. The first mile goes quickly and we turn right on road BB. A half mile and the big plow stops at the farm gate. We can see the half mile of plowed private road all the way to the house. The county road man sticks his head out the truck window, waves and goes on. As we drive up the farm road, my grandparents, in warm coats, come out on the porch and wait for us. We park a few feet from the porch. With snow falling and the temperature still below zero, not much is said. All of us carry in luggage and presents. Inside the warm kitchen, we all start to talk at once.

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