Snow

How do I remember snow? Let me count the ways.

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Waist deep, piled high, roads blocked, sledding down hill, ice. Lots of all of it with me in the picture on skis after an ice storm.

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Winters seemed to be longer, colder and snowier than they are now. I remember snow being waist deep in our yard, but I suppose at 5 years of age my waist was closer to the ground than it is now.

Since the schoolyard was on a hillside, there was an excellent run down on a sled. We used to take our sleds to school and spend recess running up the hill and sliding down. Having a fast sled was very important. Occasionally, on a really fast day, we would slide down the hill at speed, dip under the fence into the ditch beside the highway and see if we could make it up over the snow bank to the pavement. Pretty dangerous stuff, but we loved it.

Just as there was no water to swim in, there were very few ponds to skate on. I would trek a mile or more up Buckwheat Road to a pond on the Gray property where I would meet Keith and Harold and a few others to play pond hockey. No Zamboni there –shovels and sweat. It was so cold changing from boots into skates that our hands would just about freeze.

When the snow plow went by on the highway, it threw the snow up into immense banks. To get our car out of the garage and onto the highway, we had to dig a passage through those high banks, hitch a team of horses to the car and drag it out. Quite often the car would not start, but with horses that didn’t matter. We would pull it onto the highway, slide it into second gear and let out the clutch. Once it started we couldn’t shut it off.

Old car, cold weather, and deep snow.