Remembering Winters, pt 1 - The Snow

I grew up living all over. Dad was in the Air Force, a career man. He enlisted in the service at a time where advancement and money came slowly. But I can't recall wanting for anything; those truly were happy days.

We moved around a lot -- New York, Texas, Mississippi, Maine, Michigan, and finally, Maine (again). I spent the third grade in three different states; I'm not sure I learned a lot that year. Each school taught the same thing, just in a different order. But I turned out fine (I think). Well, Mom made sure of that. I think I'd visited every state east of the Mississippi River before I was ten years old.

But, Maine--that was my favorite place. My dad's parents lived there, Dad was raised there, and I was able to settle down in one place for more than three years. I moved there for the second time in the eighth grade and stayed till I graduated from college. Thus, I spent many Maine winters creating memories, which play fondly in my mind.

Call me strange, weird, whatever, but I like winter. I always have. Actually, I really love snow. The cold is okay. However, I learned one thing early living in the North. One can like the cold quite well by watching the snow swirl, and listening to the wind howl outside, while sitting in front of a warm, roaring fire inside.

Such memories include major snowstorms that would dump thirty or more inches at a time in our small Maine town. I remember one Christmas Eve day in the early seventies. It began snowing about 1:00 p.m. and continued for the rest of the day. By late that evening, we discovered our pastor had canceled Christmas Midnight Mass. I'd never heard of that before. When I awoke Christmas morning, my first thought wasn't of the presents under the tree; it was of how much snow we got. It was, after all, the first major storm of the winter. This storm was a Nor'easter--one out of the northeast from Canada.

We measured 34 inches of snow that morning. It took my Dad, my younger brothers, and me two days to shovel our walk and long, semicircular driveway. Of course, some of that time was used to make the coolest snow fort ever. It fit three boys quite easily. We each had a place for a soda (ice cold, of course), a small quantity of perfectly formed snowballs, and a built-in seat.

The day after we finished shoveling, another Nor'easter dumped another three feet on our beleaguered homestead. Good thing we were on Christmas vacation. Not all our Christmases were like that, though.

We lived in a small community of 3500 souls in central Maine. Our house was a sprawling, three-story structure with an attached two-story barn/garage. Connecting the garage to the house was a multi-story section with an unheated bedroom upstairs (mine for several years) and an oversized wood shed downstairs. That bedroom was good for sleeping, but I had to move quickly on a cold morning into the house for dressing.

Throughout fall to early winter, one of my chores was to split and stack wood for the kitchen wood stove and our living room fireplace. I spent a lot of time in that wood shed. Wood heat supplemented the regular hot-air furnace system fueled by heating oil. I hated to get out of my warm bed on a cold morning. I loved to get dressed in the early morning standing over a floor register with that hot air blowing on me. This being Maine, wood was much cheaper than fuel oil, and my folks had an awesome supply of labor to "mill" those logs for burning--three strapping boys. Ok, so I wasn't really strapping, but after splitting and stacking all that wood, I was pretty buff for a thin guy.

When the shoveling was done from two Nor'easters, the banks were taller than the porch roof. Towards the end, it took a lot of effort to throw a shovel full of snow that high. (In fact, we never did finish digging out the driveway. We did the half near the house and left the rest. I think it was late May by the time all the snow in the yard melted.)

Dad probably knew someone with a plow on his truck who could help us out. Money was tight then, but labor was cheap! Like any young boy who wanted to be playing in the snow instead of working, I complained. Deaf ears were the order of business, though.

As I look back on this time in my life now, I realize how good these times were. We took frequent breaks from our shoveling. Mom always had a cup of hot cocoa, homemade and sweetened just right, for us when we got too cold and wet to work or play. The dry heat from the kitchen stove made short work of drying our clothes for another shot at that driveway. By the time our cocoa and games were done, our clothes were dry and warm. I just loved the warm feelings I had, inside and out, as I stepped through that door, grabbed my favorite weapon of choice, and attacked that driveway again.

You know, after Mom's hot cocoa that job didn't look too bad anymore.

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