Now THAT was winter

King and I drove home from the airport late last night after a long, long day of air travel. Seeing the new grandsons was a joy and I miss them already. My daughter and son-in-law and even the dogs are being missed as well.

But life goes on and today is being spent trying to get back into my routine. As if I have one.

I managed to somehow stay awake on the drive home from Chicago . . . until we got to a truck stop somewhere in Indiana. Since the car has been having a propensity to not start of late, King sat behind the wheel with the car running while I pumped gas. For some reason, and I don't know why but I have my suspicions, King has not mastered the art of paying for gas at the pump. So rather than shut the car off and both of us make our necessary pit stops, we took turns sitting in the car with it running. And I pumped gas because King truly can not get the credit card to work at the pump. I've watched him.It never works for him. One would think a person with as much education as he has, it would not be difficult. Apparently it is.

However, I digress as I rant. I dozed off after our stop and woke to find snow hitting our windshield. A lot of snow. Then it stopped. And started again. It continued to snow off and on until we got to just outside South Haven and then the snow stopped. I'm not a big fan of driving through snow. I will whine and complain with the best of them. However, I fear we have all become lazy, complacent and just plain stupid when it comes to winter driving. And come on, this is Michigan. We used to get a lot of snow.

When I was a child winters were always snow-filled. And we walked to school. Five miles. Up-hill. Both ways. In sub-zero weather. With bread wrappers over our socks inside some pretty ugly snow boots.

The area where I grew up generally received a lot of snow. People today talk about lake effect snow. We got it then as well, although we didn't know it had a name. Snow would blow in off the lake, go airborne once more and then dump with a vengeance 10 miles inland. Right on the community where we lived. There were winters when we would have weeks off from school because of snow.

Needless to say there always was a lot of the white stuff. So much so that snow plows were of the road grader variety, not big trucks with plows. They were huge and threw snow up onto banks that were 15 feet high, annihilating  hapless mailboxes and filling driveways with snow along the way.

Walking home from school

Scrambling up these banks to avoid the snowplow was my first
and only experience in mountain climbing.

was a test of determination, tenacity and bravery. Roads were narrow and we would plaster ourselves against the banks when a car passed. However, if we heard a snowplow coming, the panic would commence. Snowplows were big, they were loud and they created a blizzard of snow when they went past. We were certain the driver would never see us on the road and we would be tossed onto the bank along with the snow, never to be found until spring.

My sister and the neighbor kids and I would spend most of our walk home listening for the plow. If we heard one we would would scream, "The plow! The plow!," and  would throw our lunch boxes up onto the snow bank and scramble up after them. The climb was my first and only experience mountain climbing. Once we reached the top, in our minds we still were not safe. There was no telling how far frozen chunks of snow would be thrown. One hit with a chunk of cement-block sized ice and we would be goners.

When the distant growl of a plow was heard, one child would quickly be elected to be lookout, while the rest of us would make a mad dash up the bank and then head for the field on the other side. Twenty feet was considered a safe distance. So after scrambling up the bank, grabbing a lunchbox and rolling down the other side, we would still battle waist-deep snow to get as far away from the dreaded monster as possible. All the while we would scream to the lookout, "Is it coming? Is it coming? Run!" There were many false alarms. The plow would be on the next block over or would turn down another street before reaching us. What was normally a 10 minute walk home would turn into an hour during the winter. We would often arrive home rosy-cheeked and ready for a nap.

No wonder we were skinny.