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22 Rennie didn't get to line the walls of her kitchen with the pages from the magazines as she had planned. For the next two weeks she was busy helping her father get the last of the apples, cushaws, pumpkins, and sweet and Irish potatoes stored away for winter use. John took up some of the boards from the floor of the front room close to the hearth, exposing two now empty holes in the earth. They had been there for many years and had been used every winter for the same purpose. Into one hole he poured the Irish potatoes they had dried; into the other went the late apples, Black Twigs, a very small but tasty apple, Winesaps, and Johnson Winter Keepers. A layer of straw came next and a few boards on top. John and Rennie removed the cushaws and pumpkins from the fodder shocks where they had been kept safe from early frost and rolled them back under the beds in the front room. Later many of them would be dried for late winter and early spring use. When it was time to begin having fires in the grate, a long slim hickory pole would be hung by strings from two nails just above the fire and under the fireboard. The cushaws and pumpkins would be cut into two-inch rings and hung along this pole. When they were dry they would be removed and put away in a safe place in the loft, and the pole would be filled again. The sweet potatoes they stored in a wooden barrel, each wrapped in a piece of newspaper or a page from a catalog. The Roman Beauty apples were saved for later use in a barrel or wooden box the same way. They would be eaten raw as a snack. They were too good to be fried or used for pies. Rennie also dried a lot of the Rusty Sweets and a few peaches on the kiln in the back yard that had been built by her grandfather from slate rocks and clay many years before. Then winter set in with a vengeance. Early in December the Slone family woke up to see a six-inch snow that "layed on" for over two weeks. Old Mother Nature had sure been shaking her feather bed. Rennie put on her father's big boots and bundled up as well as she could, wearing the beloved tarn and scarf that she'd now had for three years. She made her way to the barn to feed the stock, milk the cow, scatter corn for the chickens, and fill the water trough. Then she stomped a path to the outhouse and woodshed. Johnnie was now staying in his own home. He would come over now and then about suppertime and share a meal with them. Rennie always had enough cooked, for mountain women always cooked "more'n a plenty" just in case someone chanced to stop by. The leftovers could always be fed to the dogs and cats and pigs. With the pigs the food found its way back to the table in the long run in the form of bacon, sausage, or side meat to cook with the shucky beans, dried apples, cushaws, and pumpkins. Johnnie too had been preparing for winter. He laid up coal and wood for his fire and cookstove. By taking down the old barn, a very large one, he found enough good logs and planks to build a small shed for his mule. The rest of the wood from the demolished barn he stacked for firewood. He also cut down a large beech tree that stood just back of the barn. The next time he had supper with Rennie and her father he had an interesting story to tell. He waited until they were finished eating. When Uncle John pushed his chair back from the table, Johnnie said, "Wait jest a while. I want to tell ye somethin' that's hard to believe. Ye know that big beech tree that grew just back of the old barn?" "I shore do. Yer mother would never have it cut down. She said her hens ate the beech nuts and got fat. I remember I used to pick up beech nuts and eat 'em, but they were such little bitty things I could never get a mouthful." John smiled at the recollection. Rennie arose from the table and said, "Pa used to take us young'ns over...
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