What did you like about winter when you were a kid

stacey martin

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kennewick wa
What did you like about winter when you were little, beside Christmas. For me, we had 15 acres out of town in NW Montana. The driveway was fairly long I got to plow with the cat. The old man drove a truck and had to plow enough so he could turn the truck around. We had a big snow pile maybe around 10 feet tall. I like to dig tunnels in it. Towards the back of the property there was a hill to sled on. I like sleding at night when it was clear and the moon shining bright glistening off the snow. I could stand there for ever just looking around everything was peace ful. (execpt for the time big foot came out of the woods :eek: lol) I got a little older made some money and bought a snowmobile.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
Stacey
 
There are many, many things I miss about a snowy winter but one stands out above the rest as a pleasant memory.
Most of my young life my Father had a pick up truck. During the winters he would always switch the tires to heavy snow tires or use chains.
On those early mornings when the snow was in six foot drifts and still coming down, my friends and I all over the county would hover over the radios waiting for the magic words: "Your school is closed today...."
Which also meant Dad couldn't make it into work.

After the jumping up and down and making a lot of noise ritual was complete, Mom would clobber us with, "You aren't going anywhere unless you eat your breakfast!" We knew Dad was gearing up and warming up the truck. The bacon and eggs was choking us to death. When Mom was satisfied that we weren't going to expire from hunger, Dad would load us up in the truck and off we would go.

We spent the morning looking for folks who had slid off the road and got stuck in a snow bank. My Father would hook up to them and pull them out. When they ask what they owed him, he would always say, just a promise to remember this when you see the next guy stuck. I have never forgotten those trips.

I would imagine that if each one of the people my Father helped in turn helped one other who in turn..... The expensive tow truck drivers spent a lot of time cozy and warm around their coffee pots.

DT
 
I enjoyed (and miss) the smell of piñon wood burning in fireplaces all over town, and at Christmas time, the luminarias. I also enjoyed snow days off from school, and then as an adult, the snow days off from work. I enjoyed going around town in my Jeep looking for people to get unstuck. (And always refused any kind of payment. The look on peoples' faces when I'd show up to help was more than enough compensation.)

I think I picked that up from my dad, after a muddy trip to my grandparent's church retreat one spring to help a bunch of stranded folks get out and onto pavement after some hard rains. That was my first experience seeing what a four wheel drive vehicle can do.
 
This will sound foolish, but when I was a kid other than milking the cows and feeding the heifers, there was not that much to do on the farm (versus that of planting crops, gathering hay, putting up fence, etc) so I would grab my axe, use my snowshoes and head down to the swamp. It was about a mile away and I would go about building a camp.

I would build a nice lean too, blanket the inside with boughs, and cover the outside of it to with boughs, and on some weekends spend the night in them. I think I made 3 or 4 camps like this with one night dipping down below zero. With a nice fire going, my spruce boughs keeping me insulated I was nice and snug.

Those are some happy memories. To this day I don't head out on a snowmobile without my backpack, with a nice hatchet stashed inside, some survival gear and a small handsaw. Its doubtful I would be stranded overnight on a trail with a dead sled, but I have the confidence that should that happen, I would be just fine.

As a side note:

Last year I let my brother borrow my sled for the day because I had to watch Alyson. Rather than be bummed about not riding my snowmobile, I strapped Alyson into her sled and made a day of it...in our own, slower paced way. That was fun too.

Alyson_On_Sled2.JPG


Tree_Trek2.JPG
 
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Had "Boy Mechinac Book" When I was about 10 my brothers, 8 and 6 built a snow mobile from a lawn mower engine. Dam if it didnt work. :thumb::thumb:

Tried to convince dad we should build them and sell them.
Quote: "They will never sell..................................... Unquote


What does a 12 year old boy know about marketing??????
 
Nothing. Winters in Chicago are inconvenient, slushy, mushy, cold and dirty. I had to carry fuel oil in cans three stories to our walk-up apartment for the space heater. Streets never got properly plowed, we had to wear four buckle arctics but the slush and mud still came over the tops. I understand now why moving south was so appealing.
 
What I liked about winter as a child,,
The ability to be outside for hours and not get the bone numbing cold I get now.
 
When we had to move to Michigan it was just after The Empire Strikes Back came out. The week we moved there they had a huge snowstorm. It was so deep, they had front end loaders clearing the roads around where we lived. Because of this I had a 18ft pile of snow on the other side of the road from our condo.

I got friendly with the kid across from us and we were both Star Wars mad.....needless to say that pile of snow got dug out and everyone who happened to go by got bombed.
 
Living in "Vetsville" just north of Kemmerer Wy and south of Frontier, Wy...the west was still primarily open range. In the winter, the ranchers turned their horses out on the range. The horses would jump the cattle guard to get into the apartment complex area. They'd eat out of the trash cans. My father, an ex Chief Bosonmate had taught me to tie knots at very young ages. I took a rope and sat in the coal shed with a noose around the trash can. When my father got home and figured out what I was trying to do....he tied a knot in my behind! Deep snow......located between 2 mountain ranges it seldom snowed vertically.....almost always snowed horizontally........deep snow.....really deep snow....

Vetsville was a WW1 army officer apartment complex...it's gone.....

The town of Frontier WY......a coal mining company town.....it's gone.......

Deep snow....cold winters.....track animals.......

I grew up in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and went to HS in a little town in southern Illinois where my father was raised.....
 
Getting pulled around on the sled by dad's tractor. Used to get 6 sleds tied behind it for all of us to get pulled at once. Nothing like playing bumper sleds...ouch. :eek:
 
I'm blessed, I have a TON of good memories from winter as a kid.

We would go up onto my uncle's property outside of town (about 110 acres) and get our own Christmas tree, those were great times.

One of my other uncles had horses, so we would get sleigh rides, on an old hay wagon he put runners on. Nothing sounds like a horse all decked out in jingle bells trotting along pulling a sleigh in a nice fresh road of snow, on a cold arctic day. We also did the night rides with a big bonfire at the end of the night, mulled wine....... yum :D

Sledding, man we did this a LOT, there was a golf course close to our house that had a HUGE hill, at the bottom was a large pond, the froze over and they had one end cleared for skating, the other for run off from the sledding hill. This hill was HUGE, took like five minutes to clamber up and a full 30 or 40 seconds of sheer terror to SCREAM down it :headbang: :thumb:

I also loved snowshoeing in the winter, we had our own snowshoes and we would walk around all day, way out in the bush, I just love the silence that envelopes a forest when it is snowing, and I've learned more than enough to be prepared and to know what to take with, even on a simple hike.

We did a LOT of snowmobiling too, a LOT.

We had a number of machines, some not so new, but they worked just fine.

One time we got into a total white out condition, could not see the guy in front of you, it was snowing and blowing so bad, we stopped, and took stock, the three of us decided NOT to try to make it home that afternoon, it was a good 2 hour ride when you could see your way, but now, no way, so we knew where there was an old deserted hunter's cabin a few miles away, we got there (took a LONG time) and we camped out. We were warm, had a good fire, we also had dry soup, Lipton chicken noodle soup, comes in a foil pack, just add melted snow and the same kind of foil pack hot chocolate packs. We also had some candy bars an axe each, and what we called a "Swede Saw" like this.......
bow01.jpg


We also had rope, basic first aide kits, signal flares, rope and signal flares. That night it really snowed up there in the mountains, something like 36" in 12 hours, unreal. Before we went to sleep, we put a chunk of wood under each machine's track, to keep it from freezing in place, and we tied a rope from one machine to the next and then a tree near the old hunters shack we were in, the next morning, we could barely find the darn snowmobiles!

Up above my hometown, Kelowna BC, we get what is called Champagne Powder, it is so light and so fluffy, you cannot pack a snow ball, and it is........... interesting....... to drive a snowmobile in...... :rolleyes: Fun when you get it going, but when you wipe out, man you spend time digging out :D

Loved them cold crisp mornings, or the sound of a clear night of trees cracking in the extreme cold, sounds like a gunshot :D

Great memories for sure :wave:
 
Ah, the memories..sliding down the hill behind the barn on an old car hood...waxed,no less...struggling to find the barn in a blizzard to go feed and water the cows,,,boy was it hot in that barn..glasses steamed over the instant you walked in ...maple syrup in the spring...and shoveling snow..again and again and again...wish I could go back to those times...:D
 
I originally answered I liked "nothing" about winter when I was a kid. Chicago snow is dirty, slushy, awful.
Today somebody sent me an e-mail of a lot of Chicago snow pictures. This one is 1939 but, I'm sure, things haven't changed much. Only thing I remember different was that the snow was seldom white. Maybe very early in the a.m. but quickly turned sick looking brown or black.
They can keep it. If I ever move again it will be further south.
 

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Hearing the "no school" announcement on the radio was way up there. :D
We had about 30 acres of woods behind our house and it was my go-to place for two reasons. I loved being the first out in the morning, or out late in the evening and being alone in the woods. So quite. And the 'glow' of the sky and ground during a snow fall was awesome. The second reason would have to be 'suicide hill' (everybody had one of those, right?). This was a steep, narrow path in the woods that was the favorite in my area for sledding. After the steep run there was a hump that, if hit fast enough, would launch us for a few feet (not much by today's 'extreme' standards:eek: - but his was nearly 50 years ago). After that, a long dirt road heading down a mild slope could guaranty, if conditions were just right, a ride that could last well over a quarter mile.:thumb: Ah, for the days of the Flexible Flyer.:rolleyes:
 
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