snow days – Page 2

Image result for images of school playground under snow

Nothing ever gave me more pleasure than waking up and finding out that school was closed that day because of snow.

I remember one snow day in particular. Oatmeal for breakfast, then off to my friend Jimmy’s house. To get there, I had to climb a fence and cross the high school football field. That turned out to be not so easy: the snow was up over my knees. It was very cold that morning, and before I plodded halfway across the field, it started to snow again. I began to have hopes that tomorrow might be school-less, too.

Well, I made it across the field, climbed another fence, and in another minute or two was warming up in Jimmy’s living room, with my galoshes and shoes left by the heating vent. We decided not to go out for a while, but to watch TV instead: and what we saw was a movie, The Charge of the Light Brigade, starring Errol Flynn and Olivia DeHaviland. Jimmy’s mother made us hot cocoa–just the ticket!–and sandwiches for lunch. So fortified, we went out with our sleds and took them down to Tommy’s Pond for some excitement on the slopes.

I’ve always remembered that day very vividly. A few years ago I bought The Charge of the Light Brigade for my own movie collection, to be played on heavy snow days. But I haven’t been able to find a sled for someone my size, and the slopes of Tommy’s Pond don’t seem anywhere near as long and steep as they once were. Ah, well–we ain’t none of us as long and steep as once we were.

Well, we’ve got 28 inches of snow here in Central New Jersey this morning, and I don’t reckon to be going anywhere.

Whenever it snows any serious amount, I remember what a pure, intense delight it was to wake up in the morning and discover there would be no school that day. I’ll never forget that feeling.

Ah, sledding! Whooshing down the hill at Tommy’s Pond on the ol’ Flexible Flyer. We could keep that up for hours.

The pond was a lot of fun at night, too. Everybody came out for the ice-skating. There was a fire to warm your hands, a bench or two for when your ankles gave out, and whole families gliding around on the ice.

Snowmen standing guard in every yard, snowball fights and snow forts–and oatmeal never tasted so good as it did when you had it for breakfast on a snow day. My wife adds: “Pancakes for breakfast, and we could all have breakfast together because it was a snow day and my father had to stay home from work. That was when he could spend all day playing with us.”

Yeah–and my aunts took me to every lake and pond for miles around for the ice-skating. We got to be true connoisseurs of frozen bodies of water.

I guess I ought to point out that a lot of cities, towns, and counties have banned sledding in recent years, because every human activity in which one just might get injured ought to be banned for our own good, and it’s been many a year since I’ve seen anyone ice-skating on Tommy’s Pond–or anywhere else outdoors, for that matter.

Oh, well, maybe I dreamed it. But if I did, it was a good dream.