According to the weatherman, winter is set to arrive later this week – both figuratively and literally – as a large blizzard was forecast to create havoc and generate many topics of conversation Thursday and the actual first day of the season is Friday.
I’m writing this during the calm before the storm on Wednesday, knocking myself on my head for not addressing the broken drawstring on my snow blower this summer, hoping the snow is the light, fluffy kind that is easy to shovel.
My 7-year-old son is crossing his fingers for school to be closed Thursday, although I told him it would have to be a mega-blizzard for school to be cancelled in the Stevens Point area. He probably should hope it isn’t, as I was planning on finishing our Christmas shopping on Thursday while he was in school. Santa Claus might not be as fruitful as normal, if you get my (snow) drift, as he’s scheduled to be quite busy right from Thursday through Christmas.
I attended rural schools as a kid, so we had snow days all the time. Then again, when I was a kid we had four-foot snowfalls on a weekly basis even in the summer, school was a five-mile uphill walk both ways, and snowplows hadn’t been invented, yet. It’s amazing we were even able to attend school.
If you think I had it bad, though, you should hear the stories my parents and grandparents told me about school and winter. The snow went up to the telephone lines and their one-room schoolhouses went without heat, forcing kids to wear layers and layers of jackets.
I’ll be interested in hearing what my sons tell their children about how bad they had it when they were kids going to school in the winter. We’ve taken all the good exaggerations already, so they’ll either have to get really creative or stick to the truth. I’m voting for creative.
“Yeah, our schools never closed for snow, even when we got six inches of snow,” my son could tell his child.
“Wow, that’s a lot of snow. What’s snow, daddy?” the kid would respond, having never experienced it before due to global warming.
“Well, when I was a kid we got a few snowstorms every winter in which a fluffy type of ice blanketed the ground, making roads slippery but creating a lot of opportunities to create snowmen and snow forts,” my son could tell the child.
“Snowmen? Could they talk? Would you live in these forts?” the child would probably ask.
“Oh no. They melted before the week was over, at least that was always my experience. Your grandpa would tell you differently, though. He always told me they moved into a home made of snow in the winter to save on rent.”
I still have fond memories of my igloo home.
* * *
Originally published in The Portage County Gazette on Dec. 21, 2012.
No comments:
Post a Comment