Okay – raise your hands here – who is tired of winter?
It was during this long spell between Christmas and Spring several years ago that a Shervheim family tradition was born.
It had been a very long and cold winter. They kids had been inside more than out and we were all a little stir crazy. We needed something different – something to break the monotony.
I had been looking for something in the back of one of my cupboards and discovered my cast iron pans. In the other room I heard one of the little ones whooping it up on the wonder horse while his siblings chased each other around the room shooting their tinker toy guns.
That was it! We would have a Cowboy Night!
The kids enthusiastically jumped into the planning. We made a special supper using the cast iron pans – just like a chuck wagon – and ate it by the light of our kerosene lamp dressed for supper in our cowboy best.
Then we watched The Lone Ranger before bed.
The kids loved it – and started asking for it about mid-January every year.
The menu has changed from year to year – but it always includes baking powder biscuits, some sort of beef cooked in the cast iron dutch oven, and a fruit crisp or cobbler in a cast iron skillet.
We’ve added some authentic Cowboy music with a Sons of the San Joaquin CD.
And the cowboy costumes are no longer mandatory – usually only worn by Buddy.
But the feel and the memories are still there.
It took just a few minutes on a miserably cold winter day to create a tradition that binds us together.
Years from now – in the cold of late winter - as my kids are scattered with their own homes and families – maybe, just maybe – they’ll remember the cast iron pans, the tinker toy guns, and The Lone Ranger.
And they call each other up and say “Hey – you remember Cowboy Night?”
It all started with a comment made in a sermon a few weeks ago.