Some blizzard.
Drops twenty-plus inches of snow in less than twenty-four
hours, and you people think this is something?
Can't drive on the roads for a whole twenty-four hours, and that's
horrible? Snow banks we can mostly see
over and around, and you think it's dangerous?
Dudes.
Blizzard of '78 lasted three days, we couldn't drive on the
roads for a week, and the snow banks were no less than seven feet high. And we had to walk to town -- uphill -- both
ways.
In all seriousness, there was already a bit of snow on the
ground when '78 hit. This time, we were
lucky. The blizzard hit us with clear
streets and grass visible. There was
another major storm, a serious nor'easter, that hit February 8-10, 1969. I was young at the time, but I remember it
for the sheer snow factor. New York City
got hit worse than New England did, but we had enough snow to have a great winter
festival for days afterward.
My sister and I made snow horses after that storm. That's right - not snow men, not snow people. Snow horses.
And they were tall. My sister's
horse was well taller than we were, and she made little chunks in the side to
hoist herself up onto it. It looked more
like a giant snow wall than a horse, but we didn't care. Even after rolling the snow base, then
building the height and breadth of our snow horses, there was still enough snow
on the ground to actually jump (fall) off of them and not get hurt. And how did we know the snow was deep enough
to break our falls?
Well, I'll tell you since my parents are no longer alive to
smack me for it.
We lived in the woods, and we lived on a hill, and we had
three acres of woods and hills surrounding our house. This meant that we downhill skied around evergreen
and oak trees, and we sledded off cliffs and over the tops of wood piles hoping
to god we didn't sail straight into giant boulders. Once my sister teetered on the edge of a rock
cliff when her saucer flew off the course we built. In truth, the cliff was only about twelve
feet tall, but it still would've caused major injury had she gone over. We had to be very careful to make the trails
first, painstakingly edging down the slopes a few times with our butts firmly
planted on the sleds, adding banks and turns around the multiple pine, elm, and
birch trees and the rocks that littered every foot of the property.
We were constantly risking life and limb sledding through
the thick woods like that, and it was worse when we got out the skis. Downhill skis, not cross country ones. It was the best way to learn how to turn,
going straight at a tree trunk at about thirty miles an hour. In truth, the first time I used cross country
skis in my thirties, I almost went straight into the river because the damn
things didn't have edges. Imagine
that! What stupid idiot invented skis
with no edges? And what moronic people would buy them thinking this was a good
idea? I rented mine and promptly
returned them to the store with the distinct belief that they were defective.
This February 1969 storm, though, put all of our sledding to
a halt. Getting down the hills was not a
problem. Getting back up again, however,
was. It is extremely difficult to get
back up the hill when the snow is up to your waist. So I put away my sled, abandoned my sister
and her friends, and walked up the street to my friend Cindy's house.
Cindy didn't have a good sledding hill. Cindy had good indoor entertainment,
though. Cindy had a huge wooden doll
house that was completely furnished with miniature furniture, real stuff not
that plastic Barbie crap. The doll house
even had electricity. She also had a
good house for hide and seek, except for the dining room. In the dining room her parents had hung the
creepiest picture of some Italian prince whose eyes followed us everywhere we
moved in the room. When I got to
Cindy's, I thought maybe she might invite me in to play with the
dollhouse. But she had other ideas. Or, to be honest, it was her father who
started it.
 |
| (Not us - but you get the idea) |
Somehow he suggested that we should jump from the second
story porch into the snow below. I'm not
sure how that all got started. Maybe one
of us said, "Wow, that looks like cotton.
I'll bet we could jump into it."
Perhaps her father had been drinking and simply started throwing us off
the porch. Either way, we were jumping
off the railing like pencils and hitting the soft surface below like we were
jumping off a high dive into an Olympic-sized pool of snow.
It wasn't long before someone, maybe even me, mentioned the
word somersault. Yup, we started doing flips right off the
edge of the porch rail, right off the brown wooden beam, sailing into oblivion
until we hit the packed snow mat.
At some point, Cindy's mother came out and offered us hot
chocolate. This was probably an
excellent idea since we had pretty much decimated our landing strip, and we
were probably inching closer and closer to broken bone and twisted neck
territory.
I remembered this story when a friend sent me a picture of a
snowboard jump his son and his classmates built at their college in the suburbs
of Boston following this recent 2013 blizzard.
My friend said, "They claim it was a parking lot, but I think
they're actually launching from a roof."
Fondly the memories of Cindy's porch came back, and I looked wistfully
out my son's bedroom window, my son who's off at college up north, where
they've probably also built some crazy contraption of near-death winter
adventure, a mere two towns away from my childhood porch-jumping
extravaganza. Ah, the window, a perfect
height. The height of a second-story porch. And all that perfect snow below.
But at my age, I'd probably break a hip and have to explain
myself to both the landlord and the EMT's.
Somehow saying it reminds me of a 1969 snowstorm probably wouldn't help
my case. But, damn, it sure would be fun
to take that leap just one more time.
It's safe; I know it's safe.
That's also how I knew falling off our too-tall snow horses would be
safe. I've taken the leap, several
times, and lived to tell the tale, especially now that there are no adults left
who'll kill me for it.
