Snow (part 1)

Over the weekend we had our first measurable snowfall of the season and I must say, I am a huge fan of the white stuff.  When I was younger my sisters and I would build igloos and snowmen and have epic snowball fights that would last days and threaten to divide our town.  Ok, so they weren’t that epic, but they were still a lot of fun.  Whenever the snow begins to fall it always brings with it these memories of my youth and being that I will one day be old and senile I thought it a good idea to capture some of these memories in my blog.  (I have begun to realize that this blog acts as a time capsule more than anything else)

One of the best memories I have of winter is the blizzard of ’96.  I was 11-years-old and we got close to 4 FEET of snow dumped on us in a period of three days.  The snow literally game up to my chest in most places and the drifts were as much as 7 feet high.  It was insane; I had never seen my town so completely buried.  I remember helping my dad shovel out his car during the storm.  It was a total white-out; I could barely see 10 feet in front of me.  The snow was coming down so fast that our shovels could barely keep up.  What’s worse, we had nowhere to go with all the snow.  By the time we finished, the piles of snow in front of and behind my dad’s car were bigger than he was!

The real fun began when the snow stopped.  I got it in my head that I wanted to build an igloo, but not just any igloo.  I wanted to build the greatest igloo ever!  And with a little help from my dad I was able to do it.  Short of working plumbing and drapes, my igloo had everything.  It had a slide entrance that was accessed off the back porch and its main entrance was a long tunnel that ran along the narrow, fenced-in walkway that lined the right side of our house and led to the back yard.

Another great thing about that blizzard was that the snow lasted for weeks.  I have so many memories of spending the entire day out in the snow with my friends and sledding down the hill behind a local church.  We could go for hours and our fun lasted well into the twilight.  The only thing that brought me home was the call of my father that came beckoning over the rooftops.