WINTER WHITE

Freezing weather in the north today amuses me as I sit on my porch in shorts and flip-flops on another beautiful sunny "Winter" day in Florida.  I don’t miss the cold but I do remember how much fun it was when I was very young. (When you are young many things were fun that aren’t fun at my age)  I’m home with my grandmother, waiting not so patiently for next year when I would finally go to kindergarten.  (My birthday is in mid-November and so I missed the deadline to go to school at 5 and had to wait until I was almost six)  

Why did I like the freezing weather?  Because when the big thermometer outside our kitchen window fell below the freezing mark I had lots of fun things to do.  For instance, my grandmother would bring in our milk delivery from our back door step. I would love to see (and taste) the frozen cream that pushed the paper cap up out of the bottle and I would have a breakfast popsicle or as she called it my “moo-sicle”!  And there was much more - this was just the start of my winter day.

Nanny’s weekly chores rarely changed.  Monday was wash day and I joined her in our chilly shed and watched her fill the big “wringer washing machine” with buckets of hot water and also a big wash tub with cool water.  And almost every time, she would tell me how when she was a girl  “hot water didn’t come out of a faucet like it does today".  She would start the big Sears washer and the rhythmic pulsing sound it made scrubbing began. It was hypnotic.  And when she figured it was enough washing she transferred the clothes to the rinse tub and then fed each piece through the wringer (which scared me...she had warned many times to never get my hand “caught in a darn ringer!”   I never did.  But I did like to dip my hands in the rinse water and always pull them out quickly. Nanny would scold, “Now Calvin, you know it’s cold...why do you always do that?  We both always laughed.  However, the end of this long  process was the most fun.  Nanny would fill a big laundry basket and  put on a bandana. We  “bundled up” for our trek to the Arctic - our backyard.  As she hung the sheets on the line, they would many times instantly freeze.  “Hard as a board already...must really be cold...maybe you should go inside Calvin?”  But I never did.  I had too much fun walking between the stiff white sheets billowing sails.  I would punch them as they banged against me and they made a cracking sound.  What a simple joy it was to run up and down the rows of flying sheets  as Nanny, with a clothes pin in her mouth, would wrestle them onto the clothes lines. She would then push them high off the ground with a long clothes prop my grandpa made for her.  I would alway hide behind a white wall and she would pretend not to know where I had gone and shout my name... her words would get blown away in a March wind.  I imagined we were in a gale at sea, our sails full as we flew over the waves.

And then we would go inside to warm up.  Nanny would rub my hands and pull my feet out of my grandfather’s giant golasches.  She would tell me to go stand by the oil burning heater which warmed our whole house from our living room.  While the next load was churning in the machine she would make me some hot Ovaltine and it would remind me to save the label and ask mom to send it in (with 11 more!) for a Space Cadet decoder ring like one of my TV heroes - Buzz Corey used each week.  This routine would go on most of the day but my “help” would not.  I turned to a coloring book because Nanny said I had enough “air”.  This didn’t last long and I wished that my friends weren't having fun in school.  Nanny would continue her wash.  She never failed to remind me “to not get into anything... she would be right back”, as she ventured out again and again into our Stratton Avenue tundra.

My memory fades now like melting snow as I look out at a palm tree in front of my condo softly moving with the breeze.  I think how lucky I am to be living in Florida and away from the cold winds of January and I say quietly to my grandmother long gone, “Thanks Nanny for my frosty adventures...thanks for working so hard week after week and never complaining...my dear you would be amazed at what kids take for granted today.  

And for a moment I feel a bit sorry that my grandchildren will never get the chance to run between sheets on a white winter’s day.  

THE FIRST SNOW

"...I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.

A Child's Christmas in Wales - Dylan Thomas

 

It’s 80 today in my new state, Florida as I track the bitter cold and snow falling on my old town of Millville friends and then…I think of when I was ten or was it eleven?

     It always seemed to me that the sky became very “white” when a big snow was coming… a white stillness.  My grandmother used to say, “It was cold enough to snow.” And today was one of those days I thought walking home from school.  And just as the thought of snow occurred, I thought I saw a flake.  This excited me as it did all my friends…immediately thinking no school tomorrow…sleeping late…building a fort…snowballing everything and anything that passed by our hiding places – wishful thinking of course.  Fact was cars or kids rarely came down my street.  I literally lived at the end of the road.

I went out to play after changing my school-clothes.  But the temperature was dropping fast.  I decided not to roam and find a playmate. I shot some baskets at the net hanging on our garage and then the wind came and rattled the bony fingers of the bare trees in our backyard.  I could hear the pines make brushing sounds like brooms.  I stared at the white darkening sky.  Was that a flake? It was hard to tell. Then another floated down.  I tried to catch it with my tongue. Then another.  Then too many to count or catch – it was snowing!  I raced inside with this important news – “It’s snowing!”  My grandmother was not as excited.  “Hum,” was all she said. (I imagined that at her age if you've seen one snow you have seen them all – plus she didn’t get a day off, no matter what the weather.

After dinner I went on snow-sentinel duty until bedtime looking out the window every two minutes as my folks watched “their shows” on our new, and first Admiral 10 inch TV.  If I looked below the street lamp at the corner, I could see the snow slanting across it’s yellow beam – it was snowing sideways.  That was a very good sign.  This wasn’t going to be just snow – it was going to be a big long snow.  

I fell asleep hoping for a blizzard and I got my wish.  To most adult's dismay the forecast for “considerable accumulations” was not appreciated.   But for me, the next morning it was great news.  I got out of bed without being called twice and the TV was showing cars and buses stuck in drifts – this was going to be a great snow day.  My grandmother tuned to the local radio station and it was warning that it was bad and going to get worse as the day progressed and then it was official - in a long list I heard the Beacon School was closed for the day! 

There was no time to lose.  After a quick bowl of oatmeal, I went outside but now to my dismay I could only stay a few minutes as the wind turned the snow into needles that stung my checks; the only uncovered part of me,  I had dressed for an Arctic exploration with my grandfather’s high rubber work boots and a coat over a two sweaters.  And as always my grandmother warned me not to get “frostbite” -  which I saw in a movie once and it was awful so   I wore a pair of stiff fur lined gloves which made snowball making difficult.  After all that preparation, I was back inside in five minutes, warming up at the kitchen table drinking Lipton tea.  Outside the window I checked the old thermometer.  The red stuff went down and down each time I looked as the morning turned into afternoon.  My much anticipated “day off” of fun had quickly turned into a boring day of inside play.  And playing a board game like Ropes & Ladders or checkers by yourself is the most boring of all activities; but you do always win!

Pop came home early from work.  “They let us go, Ethel!” he announced.  My grandmother replied, “Hum, that's nice,” and continued to stir a big pot of stew, one of my winter favorites. This was her usual snow day meal – a concoction of left-overs from Sunday's dinner that simmered for hours. Nanny had a knack for turning odds and ends into a delicacy.

The next day, to my surprise,  it continued to snow non-stop.  Around 4:PM in the afternoon of more boring day #2 there were three-foot drifts against our front door. Then a big surprise, with a “thunk” sound our electricity went out and everything stopped – even the Krazy Kat clock”s swishing pendulum tale.  And thus, started one of the greatest adventures in my young life – I was going to live through and  survive a real life semi-disaster.  The electricity was off for the next 3 days.  Days that I learned what it was like for my grandmother and Pop when they were my age!  NO TV!  Reading an old newspaper by the soft light of candles.  The harsh smell of a portable kerosene heater in the middle of our living room.  Sleeping under piles of blankets.  Jack Frost’s art frozen on our windows. 

I learned so much in those few dark days as we all talked from dinner to bedtime.  Tales of the biggest snow my folks remembered.  How they had to walk between 10-foot drifts.  “It snowed a lot more then,” my grandmother said. (Which she would say every time it snowed – she was a predictor of global warming long before it became trendy) For the first time in my life everyone was home during the daytime.  As the wind whipped around our house we played checkers, dominoes and rummy (and I still believe Pop let me win most of the time).  And then the wind stopped.  The frozen night was silent again, and a beautiful moon turned everything bright silver.  The lights came back on and all of our machines started to hum again.

And I knew I would have to go to school tomorrow!