GOD’S MIRACULOUS WHITE STUFF

It’s snowing!  The first snowfall of the year—and it’s only the first of November.

I love the first snowfall.  It makes me feel like getting out our old thirty-three-and-a-third vinyl record and playing Jackie Gleason’s orchestral version of Snowfall.

It also reminds me of the snowfalls when I was a kid.  I remember evenings when seven or eight of us neighborhood youngsters would congregate in the road at the corner under the arc-light and race around trying to catch those big, fluffy flakes in our mouths.  We’d giggle and laugh and thrill to the joy of the moment.

But these flakes aren’t those nice, huge, delicious ones.  Nor are they the little tiny balls that usually are blown in with the wild winds.  They are the small ones that surprise us by silently dropping down.  You know, the ones that are just the colder side of raindrops.  But glancing out the window, I see that every now and then, one of those large flakes is beginning to make an appearance.

For those of you who remember the boxes of laundry detergent our mothers used to use on washday, we would categorize those big fluffy flakes as Ivory Flakes, and the tiny round balls that would come barreling in as Ivory Snow.

Couldn’t help checking out the window again, and the flakes are getting larger.  This morning started with a heavy frost.  So the snow that is falling on the shed roofs, porches, and railings is beginning to pile up.  What’s landing on the grass, roads, or in the dirt hasn’t started gathering, yet.

I remember, as a kid, the snows would be almost thigh-deep.  We haven’t had snows that deep for a long time.  I have to kind of chuckle when I consider this.  I remember seeing a Family Circle cartoon where the father and his small son are walking side-by-side in the snow.  The father says something like I just did, how he remembered the snows being deeper.  The picture depicted the snow to be about knee-high for dad, but son was plowing through almost waist high white stuff!

Oh, and the fun we had playing in the snow!

Of course we did all the normal things one does in the snow—made angles and snowmen, threw snowballs, built forts, and even shoveled walks.

Our road was a street that cut in half the rise of a hill in the eastern residential area of our small city, DuBois.  Over by our favorite arc-light there was a crossroads.  Third Street, our street, was a paved road that, at this point, went up the hill to another level of our street.  Sherman Avenue crossed our road there and was a dirt alley that went on up the hill.  But the part that went down to the bottom level was paved.  Combined, it was a dandy place for sledding.  We knew we could be classified as “one of the bigger kids” when we had mastered the maneuver of coming down Third Street's hill, making the turn onto Sherman and, flying past all the houses, continue down the lower hill.  At the bottom of Sherman, we either made another left turn onto Lakeview Drive and ended up near the junction of the main road, or we ended up on the bank of the Tannery Dam which bordered the far side of Lakeview. 

Eventually, the city more-or-less discouraged that challenge by designating a good long run on Fourth Street, the upper level of the hill that ended in a nice field rather than near traffic or the dam.

About that time, my father built us a bobsled.  If I remember correctly, it could hold six or seven of us at a time.  Both of my older sisters actually mastered it’s steering.  I don’t remember why I never did.  Maybe it was because by the time I was old enough to do so, the weather pattern had changed and there wasn’t enough snow to make getting the bobsled down from the garage rafters worthwhile.

The flakes are now getting thicker and are starting to outline the individual branches of the trees of the woods on the lower part of our property.  If this keeps up, and the wind doesn’t start blowing, by evening we might have a lacy patchwork of limbs, branches and twigs to enjoy.  Especially if there is a full moon.

Our daughter-in-law was born and raised in the south.  Although she would like to have more, she’s had very little experience with living in and dealing with snow.  So when we do get a snowfall, we tease that she must be thinking of us.

Just checked the window again, and as happens with so many “first snows,” it has already not only stopped snowing, but also melted from the porches, railings, and many of the shed roofs.  Guess we will have to wait for another snow before we can enjoy moonlit lacy branches.