Let it snow

I enjoy snow. I feel for all those people that live in the southern climes that don’t get the opportunity to see and play with snow. But then I assume that all those people feel for me not having the opportunity to enjoy warm weather all of the time and what that brings. When I was young we had our own built in snow slope right outside my apartment building. If you got a good dumping of snow there was a walkway between the hill next to our house and the little park that was there also that was perfect for sledding. Here’s a picture of my dad and me sledding down at the end of that runway. If you were really good and got up enough speed, you could make it all the way out to the street and hope no cars were coming. In this picture, we did make it to the street.

At the top of that walkway was a set of stairs that if packed with enough snow allowed us to get a good head of steam for the run down the path. Periodically we chose to build a bump in the middle of the path to make it more exciting. Just off of the path towards the bottom, there was a boulder about 3 feet round that could be lethal if not carefully circumvented. I remember a friend of mine Donny that wasn’t so lucky in steering clear of it. It left a pretty big dent in his head. The rock was too big to remove or cover with snow. It just added to the fun. Besides, it was an important part of the park in the Spring and Summer. It was third base.

As I grew older I got to have more fun in different amounts of snow. My first year in college there was a blizzard that left 5 or more feet of drifts outside our dorm building. I lived on the second floor of James Building in H-Quad at SUNY at Stony Brook. A number of us decided to jump out of our windows into the drifts of snow. Some of the more daring of us (not me) even chose to jump out of the third story windows. It was much better than going to classes.

With house ownership, snow gave me a new task to participate in. Driveway shoveling. I actually didn’t mind shoveling the driveway. I did most of it myself and it gave me a time to be at peace with the world. Moving to a bigger house provided more opportunity to shovel, especially with some of the major snowstorms we had in the 90s.

But alas, age does creep up on you and more and more people suggested that I invest in a snow blower. So much for peacefully quiet shoveling. I still get to do most of it myself, but now I have to wear ear protection. I also tend to listen to podcasts of old time radio shows, books on tape or storytelling while I’m doing it. So becoming one with the snow is not something that is as restive and peaceful as it used to be, though I still enjoy doing it.

Of course purchasing the snow blower was the death knell of snow on Long Island. In the past 3 years we have had very little of it, certainly not enough to build any of those massive mounds and forts that I enjoyed building as a youth. Maybe some day it will come back.