Snow Days – Memories of Me Monday

{February 1966 – Hopkins, MN}

TODAY’S MEMORY JOGGER: “Did it snow where you lived as a child?  What kinds of things did you do in the snow?”

I grew up in southern California so, no, it didn’t snow there.  However, as I’ve mentioned before, my family spent two years in Minnesota where it most definitely DID snow.

In fact, the snow is the very reason that those two years stand out so sharply in my mind.  And the tornadoes.  We didn’t have either one in our California beach city!

. In the photo, from left to right, Steve, Mike, Denise, and me.  I was nine.  That’s our house in the background.  You can just make out two very dirty cars in the garage (from driving in the snow) and I think that might be baby Lisa peeking out of the living room window.

We kids loved playing in the snow.  We loved “snow days” even more, when the schools were closed and, if it snowed hard enough, so were many companies.  Sometimes my dad got to stay home, too!

We did all the usual snowy things; built snowmen, dug snow forts (although that was discouraged due to the danger of cave-ins), rode disks and sleds down the back hill, I seem to remember ice skating on a pond but I may have either dreamed that, or made it up!  My brother, Mike, did a little skiing, mainly down our back hill.  And of course we had snowball fights!  I don’t remember ever doing any shoveling to clear the walks or driveway; Mike might have, but it was probably mainly my dad.

My dad also made us a toboggan out of a long narrow piece of plywood curved up in the front and, much to my mom’s dismay, he’d pile all of us kids on it, climb on himself, and off we’d go down the hill with no way to steer.   It was AWESOME!!!  {Thx, Dad!}

There was a pond across the street from our house that always froze over in the winter.  This is where I think we may have ice skated.  I know for sure we ran across the ice and slid around on it in our boots.  I also remember standing at the edge of it when it was newly frozen over, with my little brother, Steve.  I told him to try walking on the ice and see if it would hold his weight.  “If it’ll hold you, it’ll hold me,” I told him, “because I’m bigger.”

I’ve always had a talent for backwards logic.

FOR NEXT WEEK: “Where do you like to eat out, and what do you order?”