ICE !
No cream…just that gosh-awful ICE. On the roads, on the sidewalks, on the parking lots & driveways…
By the by, I will take this opportunity to give a shout-out of appreciation–which I try to do at least yearly–to those folks around town who keep their sidewalks cleared. Not everybody is able, I do understand, and the village guys have got other fish to fry, so to speak, when the white stuff starts coming down but having an open space to walk in early in the morning–or later when the sun is up, for that matter–is a godsend when I’m out there with my flashlight, my safety vest, my mittens and my taillight, trying to stay upright. I sometimes try to walk in the snow, because it crunches into my shoe treads (if there are any left) and gives the impression of being a little firmer, or at least a better place to land if I go down anyway. But when there has been rain followed by dropping temperatures and THEN snow, it’s liquid treachery with every step, because that ICE is lurking beneath the crystal covering. I have even received a set of Snow Trax that should make me nimble as a mountain goat but so far, I’m just into the “goat” part (not to be confused with G.O.A.T.–”Greatest Of All Time”.)…and things could get Baaaahd.
The rugged ice that’s out there lately has reminded me of my second grade year when we had on the playground a lot of this stuff that’s frozen into peaks & shards all over the place. One day I went out for recess–wearing a dress, that’s all that was allowed then, though we did get to put snow pants underneath- and fell down on my knee (Both of my knees are tastefully decorated with scar tissue from this kind of activity) but I got up and continued playing until the bell rang and we went inside. So I sat there, doing whatever it is that second graders did back then, reading or something, and my teacher–Mrs Stouffer, I think it was–came around checking on the work being done in my row –Joey Farago was probably cutting up, he usually did–and she noticed a small puddle of blood collecting by my shoe (black & white saddle oxfords probably, those were pretty standard “school shoes” back then). I hadn’t noticed it but she flipped out at the sight (Why would you go into teaching in elementary school if you could not deal with blood occasionally?) and sent me to the office so somebody else could deal with my injury. The office lady called my mother, who came up, took me out of school and to the doctor, the only one in town, Dr. Klann. He always had a cigarette burning on his desk and a dish of lollipops for kids. Apparently, he figured that I was just “a bleeder” and chose not to do any stitches, just a big, fat bandage and I got to go back to school to show everybody how wounded I was. The fact that I had a dress on and the snow pants were not to be worn until we went out to get on the bus, made the display much easier to accomplish. I do not recall getting a whole lot of sympathy and I never did get a stitch of any kind until breaking my wrist decades later, when I was teaching seventh grade. Not a whole lot of sympathy then either. The wrist that was broken was my right and the kids in my class were sure that I would not be able to write out my test for Friday–as I did every week–but I saw that coming and started writing–very slowly–with my left hand, starting on Wednesday, not Thursday night as usual, and I got the blinking thing done and run off (Remember ditto machines, the purple printing?) to their total dismay. No rest for the Wicked, as my father used to say.
Anyway, thanks to all of you out there who clear your sidewalks to save me from that fate once again.
Since I just did a program on blizzards, I have learned some interesting things and hope that we do not have to encounter another disaster of the sort described in some of the news reports.
We vintage types remember the ‘77-’78 epic, of course, but I discovered that the BIG SNOW of 1950 (I must have been in the third grade; I remember shoveling our way out to the barn…and not going to school !) was a thing too. Fun Fact : the “Blizzard Bowl” was played down in Columbus between OSU and Michigan to decide the championship in the Big Ten and who was going to the Rose Bowl that year; Michigan won, 12-3, with only 27 rushing yards and no first downs. Nowadays, all of the weather events have names–Polar Vortex, Alberta Clipper, Great White Hurricane, etc. but I don’t remember any of that. Even regular hurricanes get nicknames now. Maybe it’s because we hear and see so much more of the weather these days, the weather service folks are just trying to make individual events seem more memorable. Back in the day, it was just. “Grandpa’s gone to the barn and we ain’t seen ‘im since Wednesday.” Good old days…they were chilly.
