Snow rememberances

In honor of the fact that I will not have to deal with snow, here is some interesting snow tidbits from my childhood, just to show you that I did once enjoy snow, but now as an adult it is not so fun. The information below came from my sister's blog, and my response to her blog entry is below that in a different color.

Memories of yesteryears gone by...

• So many snowstorms I can't even count them infiltrate my childhood memories.  There were a few, though, that were true blizzards of epic proportions.  I will never, ever forget one in particular.  I know I was in high school, and although my dad may correct me I'm thinking it was in 1997.  The blizzard came roaring in and absolutely crippled the entire county.  We were still living on the farm then, of course, and had the great big tractor and loader that could dig us out of anything.  Somehow the electricity managed to stay on in our house, but went out for my cousins and some friends.  Due to that circumstance, our old farmhouse became home base.  They really did move in!  My mom, my aunt and our pastor's wife took up residence in the kitchen and supplied a constant stream of chili, hot chocolate, and other warm offerings.  Because we had thousands of cattle that still needed to be fed, the operations had to continue.  My dad and his brothers worked tirelessly around the clock to get the food to the cows.  Their sheds and feed bunks, however, kept getting snowed in.  New winds would come up and the snow would fill it all in, making it impossible to get the food to the animals.  That's where we kids came in.  We were outside almost nonstop, shoveling out feed bunk after feed bunk after feed bunk.  One would think it's something like child abuse and breaking all sorts of labour laws, but I think that every single one of us that were working had one of the best times of our lives.  We STILL talk about that winter and that experience.  We still reminisce about the breakout snowball fights, games of king of the snow mountain and deliveries of cookies and hot chocolate from my mom and her cooking buddies.  I hold those few days as some of my fondest memories.  We would tromp in from the hard work, peel off our wet clothes in the basement and shove the mittens and gloves next to the heater to dry while mom gathered up all of the snow gear and threw in it the dryer to ensure that it was warm and toasty for the next round.  We would tromp up the stairs and file in around our huge kitchen table, gulping down bowls of hot chili or chicken noodle soup and devouring biscuits, dessert, and other yummy offerings.  Random (and slightly abusive) bouts of the card game Spoons would break out and laughter could be heard nonstop.  Snow can definitely bring and help to form some good memories.  But then there is the scary...
• In that same winter storm we received a call from my other aunt and uncle that lived a few "fields" and roads away from us.  They were out of almost everything and needed some reinforcements.  My mom packed up some boxes of supplies and sent me, my cousin Matt and our friend David off on the snowmobiles to deliver it.  We got there just fine, it was the trip back that became problematic. A fierce wind came up and we were suddenly in the middle of a true Midwestern Whiteout.  You can't imagine how scary this is.  We were driving through the fields that we had worked in our entire lives and thought we knew like the back of our hands, only to discover that we had absolutely NO idea where we were, or how to get home...and it was getting colder by the minute.  I remember the true and absolute fear that crept around my heart as we discussed which direction we should go.  Finally, we ran across an irrigation ditch.  We were able to figure out our direction from there and eventually make our way home, but not without some scary moments and thoughts of being stuck in that field going in circles for hours entering our minds.  Scary indeed.
• I recall hours and hours spent on our "sledding hill."  It was a big hill just a few minutes walk from our house.  All of the cousins would come over once it snowed and we would hurtle ourselves down the hill, only to grab our sleds and trudge back up to the top again for another round.  This hill was the site of my broken ankle of 1993.  I was at the top of the hill with my cousin, Steven.  At the time he was pretty small and as we looked down I remember saying, "Are you SURE you want to go over the jump?"  He was sure, so off we went.  We flew through the air-and out of the sled-and as I came down my foot was pointing straight down.  It lodged into the snow and snapped back, breaking my ankle in three places.  It was just two days before Thanksgiving.  I spent that entire night in pain on the couch in the living room while they waited for swelling to go down just a little.  The next day was spent at the hospital in Rapid City waiting for them to fix it.  I was in so much pain that my mom finally lost it and I remember her saying, "Can't you just give her something!?"  Thanksgiving Day I spent on the couch at my grandma's house, my foot propped up on a pillow, while various relatives came to visit and chat with me.  Something like 8 or 10 weeks later the cast was off.  The next winter I finally tackled that hill again...I won't say I wasn't scared, but I won.
• This isn't really a particular memory, but something about the deep cold that I'm always trying to express to my husband.  It's how the cold freezes things...water, hair, nose hairs, you name it, when it is that cold outside it seems nothing is safe.  I remember many walks across my university campus when the icy cold air would freeze all of the nose hairs together and if my hair was wet when I stepped out the door whatever was left hanging out of my hat would immediately turn into hair icicles.  I definitely don't miss that about the cold.
• I also recall the chilly breezes that tried to enter our house every winter.  Before my dad had new windows installed in our old farm house I could put my hand up to the windows and feel the cold air leaking in along the sides.  Every winter after that first cold snap my dad would seal up the windows with some sort of plastic and I seem to remember a hair dryer being involved somehow, but maybe that is my mind playing tricks on me.  Regardless, I was always thankful when that saran wrapish stuff went over the windows, because it meant our bedroom would be much warmer.
• Another memory is the way the snow could always pile up.  When it is that cold outside, the first snowfall doesn't melt.  The next one simply falls on top of that, and the next on top of that.  The next thing you know, there are huge mounds of snow everywhere.  They become piled up so high in the streets that it is hard to see around them when you are trying to turn.  They always became piled up so high on our farm that we could have some pretty amazing games of King of the Mountain!  In the spring it was always so interesting to see how long it would take those massive mounds of snow to melt down.  The steady drip, drip sometimes even caused some flooding if it was combined with a massive spring rain storm.  
• Another great winter memory I have is ice skating.  We weren't great at it, but we always tried.  We would take our skates and head down to whatever pond or patch of ice seemed frozen over enough for us to attempt to glide across it.  The gliding, however, wasn't so easy.  Usually the ice froze with little bumps and bubbles on it because the wind in South Dakota never seemed to let up.  It was tough to really get going smoothly with all of these little bumps in the ice.  We definitely weren't figure skating!  I do remember one night in particular though.  The winters were long and hard for my dad, and usually by the time he was done with all of his chores on the farm it was dark and time for dinner (and probably a late dinner at that).  One night, though, he came and told all of us kids to get into the pickup truck.  He loaded up our skates-and some for himself!  I remember being so surprised, thinking that I didn't even know my dad COULD skate.  He then drove us out into one of our pastures where he had found a relatively smooth little pond, he lined the truck up on the pond, left on the headlights, and we skated there for what seemed like hours.  It was such a special time.  For once the icy cold wasn't penetrating every bit of exposed flesh and we were laughing and having fun with my dad.  The darkness around the pond combined with the brightness of the headlights on the pickup truck made it seem almost magical.  Maybe it was, just a little.

I'm pretty sure I could go on forever, but I should leave it at that.  These memories make me both nostalgic and thankful.  Thankful, perhaps, that I don't have to scrape snow on a regular basis, or breath in air so cold it hurts my lungs, or try to navigate treacherous, icy sidewalks.  Nostalgic, however, for those days gone by.  Snow is magical.  It creates an entirely different world.  As a child, I think that snow is one of those things that often has the ability to open up your imagination even further and help you to create and have memories that become a little fuzzy around the edges, but beautiful just the same.  Thanks for the memories, snow! 





So many good memories. I enjoyed reading about them. Remember all the fun snow drifts, like the one that would blow between the house and the shed with the car in it and also the big one over by the shop? I use to love to dig a tunnel into that one and we would lay in it. Remember all the times we would slide down the big hill of snow into the drain ditch? And we would try to hide from dad when he was in the feedtruck? LOL 


I remember chasing cattle on New Year's Eve one year down at the Fortak place. They got out and were all over those two fields closest to Aileen's and we were in our snowsuits and we chased cattle on foot. I came to one of the little irrigation ditches but didn't know it and the snow was so deep that when I ran over the ditch I dropped completely out of sight in the snow. I freaked and I was all alone and I was afraid I would get trampled by a cow in the snow before I could get out. 


I also remember the time when Daddy had to dig from the garage to get out to go get Charita and Kevin and the boys to come stay at our house. Don't remember if Dean and Julie, Gary and Aileen and Grandma and Grandpa came too, but I remember when it was so bad the power was out and we had to use the generator. 


And how about at Nisland in the big field? Wow, some good times in the snow there. Remember playing that game where you would make a pie shape in the snow and you had to stay in the lines to play? And I remember one time we made a HUGE fort in the snow, it was several classes, and we had stacked snow bricks SO high that we couldn't see over the walls, and we had HUGE rooms in it and it was so awesome! 


Good times ice skating too, remember going up and down the drain ditch? HA HA HA, little skating steps all the way down and back on the bumpy water. I do remember that time Daddy took us to the pond though, what a good memory! Remember when we would ice skate on the dam up at the feedlot? That was usually pretty good ice. The hill was always good too. I remember Candy running in the door all out of breath screaming about you being hurt and we drove up there so fast, and then I was so worried about you and trying to get Daddy to stop in the feedtruck that I ran down the hill in the snow and got going so fast I couldn't stop and I fell down and almost couldn't get up in time to stop him and then he was fussing at me about running down the hill. 


I also remember when they use to hook our sleds up to the pickup truck and pull us behind them either on that or the four-wheeler and we would be in the tire tracks and it was SO fun and we would go so fast that it would really hurt when we wrecked! 


Wow, good times. I still don't miss the snow, but those were some fun times. Thanks for the memories, sis! And yes, you can tell when it is below zero by whether or not your nose hairs freeze instantly when you walk outside! I remember when the snow came so early one year at SDSU that the people with bicycles didn't have the chance to put them inside and the snow was so deep it was over the bikes. We never saw the bikes again until spring thaw, and we had been walking over them all winter and the weight of us and the snow bent them all out of shape so they were all ruined when the snow melted. 


I also remember people getting really long extension cords to plug their cars in WAY out in the parking lots from their dorms so their cars would start in the cold weather. LOL So funny.