Flashback Friday

The other morning, we awoke to find about an inch of snow here in the 'Ville.  Personally, I would have rather had at least 3 or 4 inches - enough to use our virgin snow blower - but I love snow and I'll take what I can get.  That morning, our local schools were delayed two hours, while schools in counties farther north and west of us were closed.  During the drive to work that morning, I thought about how it was back in the day when we were jonesing for snow days.

As a kid, we didn't watch the nightly local news like we do today, but we did pay attention to the weather people in the winter time.  Whenever they said the word "snow" we would practically come unglued in hope of enough snow so school would be closed the next day.  Never mind the fact that we would have to make up those days - we just wanted to stay home and be able to play out in the snow.  We would say some heavy- duty prayers for snow before we went to bed, and would hardly sleep during the night due to the anticipation of a big snow.  Snow days ranked right up there just below Christmas break.

During my middle school and junior high school days, I was fortunate to have many, many snow days.  In the winter of 1976, we were out of school for snow over two weeks, and in the late winter of 1978 we had over three weeks of consecutive snow days.  Yep, that's a lot of snow.  During those weeks, we would be glued to the 6:00 news and hold our breath until we heard the newscaster say "No school for Jefferson County tomorrow."  We knew we had been given one more day.  Now, that determination is made the morning. 

I'm proud to say that I know the woman responsible for making that determination.  She's a friend from the VFW, and a Ladies Auxiliary member.  On nights when snow is in the forecast, she is on "alert" and gets up at 3:00 in the morning.  If there is snow, she drives all over the county and then she gives the word on whether or not school will be delayed or closed for the day.  I ask you - is that a cool job or what?  I'm sure she's not real thrilled over getting up at 3:00 in the morning after being out at the VFW the night before, but she does her job well. 

But I digress.  On snow days, things just seemed more fun than on our regularly scheduled holidays.  In our house, I would bundle up and walk down to the Greenwood Market and would get to buy a frozen pizza, a bag of Lays sour cream and onion potato chips, and a 3 Musketeers candy bar.  Once back home, Grandma would doctor up the pizza, adding onion and green pepper, and when the pizza was done, she'd call our neighbor Alice, who would bundle up and walk down through the yards and have pizza with us.  That was our traditional snow day routine.  But those are a thing of the past.  There's no such thing as snow days in the working world.  Even during the foot and a half snow in January 1994, my office was only closed for one day.  It sure would be cool to stay home during a snow day and have a frozen pizza.