Before the snowstorm of January 25, 2026, people were out desperately shopping for bread, water, and milk as if the world supply of goods was going to cease for ages. I tried to recall from my childhood if my parents ever ran out to the store to get bread, water (no one drank water other than from a hose) and milk with the news of a snow storm. Really, was there news of a storm or did we just go to bed hoping to wake up to snow on the ground and the radio on waiting to hear if school was closed? We hung to the side of the bed with the shoe box sized AM Zenith clock radio waiting to hear if your school district was closed. I believe we were District 3. And there it was … snow day, no school.
Now the struggle to find the clothes to head out. In my family of five boys and one girl, her stuff was easy, it was pink and well, girlie. For us boys a different story most all hand-me downs so finding matching mittens or gloves was an issue. The three older boys were just two years apart in age. Me, I was three years apart from my next older brother, then five years and then seven years. So, imagine the condition of the stuff that got passed down the line to me. But at times I felt honored to be wearing something my oldest brother once owned.
However, getting those black boots that slipped over your shoes as hand-me-downs was not fun. Most likely the inside tongue was worn or ripped and only half the buckles still worked. Mittens never matched and if there was an inside lining it wasn’t there by the time my hands entered the mitten. As for gloves you were lucky to find two and if you did it would be two right gloves so you just flipped one over and “made it work”. Ala Tim Gunn if you know who Tim Gunn is.
As for outer garments, no Patagonia, EMS, LL Bean, North Face, it was Hartman’s, Sears, or Grants, one hundred percent cotton making sure it would get soaked though in no time. Even the long johns if you found them in the back of your dresser drawer were cotton, and maybe waffled but still cotton. When you got home for the day your pants could stand up because they were frozen solid. Wait socks too were cotton but hopefully there were some Wonder Bread bags around that you lined the socks with before wrestling with the buckles on your boots. Boots, here is the rub with them. You had school shoes and sneakers. If you wore your school shoes and the snow, ice, or water destroyed your shoes parents weren’t very happy. So, what did every smart thinking kid do… wore sneakers. As you may know sneakers were not made of leather then. Sneakers were of course cotton: Keds, Converse, Thom McCann, PF Flyers or as in my family of six Grants (which made knock offs of the others just mentioned). So, more cotton but remember if you were lucky your foot was protected by a bread bag. I think the rich kids used tin foil, a/k/a aluminum foil.
Having no recollection of any one coat in my life, other than one I bought myself in high school, all that mattered was that the zipper worked. Okay, wait I do remember those green arctic explorer coats with the fur around the hood. I begged for one and I eventually got one, but of course, it was a knock off from the named brand. Kinda makes me think about when the store Marshalls first opened and all our clothes had irregular or seconds written in them.
Finally out the door, the problem was your older brothers beat you so try to find a sled, you know the wooden ones with rails “Flexible Flyer” type. No ours weren’t Flexible Flyers they were Sears; Grants didn’t make sleds. Well, it was the metal saucer banged up from three older brothers but it would do. Anyway, once we got to the top of the hill we would double up on a sled with a friend. The upfront person steering with their feet on the handles. Or we would double up jumping on the person lying down on the sled. Always aware that if you hit a bump the top person runs the risk of a bloody lip from hitting the bottom person’s head. We used the street, Dewey Street or would head over to the hill in the woods. If adventurous we would trek through the woods to the hill behind the elementary school. My brothers had bob-sled that I think my dad got from a display at the supermarket where he was a manager. I never got to use it though. One year he got a four-foot plastic boat, like those plastic kiddie pools but shaped like a boat. That boat cruised the hill at amazing speeds but was very difficult to steer. Not sure what happened to it. Fun while it lasted.
One of the fun things done on the hill was a sled train where everyone was lying down on the sled and locked their feet into the sled behind them. The goal was to make it to the bottom of the hill. Some sleds were singles, others double with someone on top. Jumps were the thrill of the hill as was sledding between the trees. I never did that though.
If not sledding, snow meant snowballs and well snowballs can mean trouble. Lucky, once again, for us trouble never happened only because we had the best place to throw snowballs at cars. If a tractor-trailer went by, it was open season. A small cemetery by the Historical Society building lent the perfect hiding place with a sure escape avenue if anyone ever stopped to chase us. Cars would beep, drivers would yell but because there really was no way for them to stop it was easy pickins. When I think about it, of course it was not smart and someone could have easily snuck up from behind and caught one of us at least. And no doubt by the end of the day all of our parents would have been notified. Because we like sledding more, snowball throwing was far and flew an activity we undertook.
Now “skitching” was another story. Grab the back bumper of a car or a bus, hold on tight and slide on the snow packed road. By now you know there were no parents with us when we went outside on a snow day. It was getting your clothes on, maybe shoveling (this is when it is good to have older brothers because that was their job) and going out and playing. Moms would say don’t break anything while sledding and would think, but never say it out loud, please Lord don’t let them get caught throwing snowballs at cars.
