Mama Kat Thursday: Old Days Snow Days

The Mama Kat challenge today is to, "Describe what snow days were like when you were a child. What made them memorable?"

My school years were from 1963 to 1975 and back then, school was rarely canceled for weather. 
For one thing, I lived in central Indiana and, while it did snow, it seldom snowed enough to warrant school closures. 
Certainly, we'd see flakes falling and be hoping a snow day might get called, but that was exceedingly rare.
 Mostly because we wouldn't get more then two to six inches at any one time--
if any fell at all and it didn't always.
Getting a snow day really was a matter of timing: snow had to fall heavy enough, like eight inches or more, and build up on the roads fast enough or over-night, so snowplows that snowplows couldn't get all roads cleared adequately for buses to be able to pick up students.
You have to picture that this was a large, spread-out farming community and most people lived on winding back roads or on gravel roads that were the bottom of the snowplowing priority list. A snow day like that could easily be two snow days before everything would get plowed.
We didn't have to make those days up back then, either.

I do remember a few snow days, though. They were so rare, we were thrilled to have one and we'd bundle up and run right out to play in it! We'd build snowmen, sled down hills, build structures with snow-blocks and make snow angels. Then we'd go inside, play board games or Barbies or read books or perhaps watch television, if anything worthwhile was on.  Everyone had a limited television viewing venue of 3 networks and maybe a local independent.
Mostly we had to make our own fun.(When I was a kid, by the way, there were no video games; no movies on VHS or DVD; computers took up a whole rooms they were so big and "social networks" were called telephones. )

Thanks for Visiting!

Comments

Dee D said…
Same with me, Bev. Those dang snow plows ruined everything. I can remember boo-ing a neighbor for plowing out our long driveway and freezing my tooshie off waiting for the school bus. On the days we did get off, it was usually bad enough to lose electricity, so tv was out. We stoked up the fireplace, mom cookedh favorites[hot chocolate, popcorn,stews on the gas stove & oven; and we basically had an old fashioned camp out, playing games, Barbies [like you] and reading by flashlight or oil lamp. I remember it fondly as primitive as it was considering today's standard. These kids don't know how well they have it and they don't know what they are missing.
Jerralea said…
I know what you mean - I never had snow days, either. At first we lived in a suburb in Chicago and while there was plenty of snow, there was plenty of equipment to keep the roads cleared off. And ... I only lived two blocks from school! Then we moved to Florida and obviously never had snow days there either.

Over the years, my kids have experienced plenty of snow days because we live in a rural area that only has one snow plow for the whole county and can't keep up. My kids always prayed for snow days. Some years they got several, other years none at all.

gin said…
I'm in the south and I could count the snow days we had on one hand and snow would be 3 inches maybe. I would think Indiana was heavy snow in the winter. I'm enjoying visiting your blog. Stopping in from mamakatslosinit
Lana said…
Where I grew up, school was rarely cancelled because we didn't get much snow! But on those few times when it did, we had so much fun! Stopping by from Mamakat's.
KatBouska said…
Social networks WERE telephones! The world seemed a lot less scary back then when everything wasn't overly accessible.

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