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The recent weather forecast had me hoping for snow. I love snow!  So, this past weekend, even though the odds were against it, I was hoping for a nice snowfall.

My love of snow started at an early age. Waking up with snow on the ground, the roof tops covered under a blanket of snow and seeing the tree branches coated with snow turned me into a devoted snow lover.  That love has never left me.  While I can’t remember large snowfalls every year as I grew up here, I do remember the fun all the kids in my neighborhood had with even a few inches.

When a snow day meant school was closed, that made for a real holiday for us.  Seems like every kid on the block’s imagination was working overtime to make the best of snow adventures.  But first, there were snow day rules of etiquette.

You could not go into somebody else’s yard to play in the snow before they did. Each kid was supposed to have the pleasure of being first to track thru the snow in their own yard.

Second, you weren’t supposed to knock icicles down from the roofs of their houses.  It wasn’t much fun to go out into your yard and see that somebody had knocked the icicles down, because that deprived you of the right to claim who had the longest icicles hanging from the roofs.

Third and most important was the snowball fight etiquette. ONLY snowballs were to be used.  No rocks, potatoes or apples could be coated with snow and thrown during the fight.

Were those rules obeyed? Absolutely not!  And the best way to avoid the trauma of rule three not being followed was not to play snowball fighting with certain kids on the block.

Snow brought out the architectural skills in the kids. We made snow forts from porch chairs and blankets and igloos shaped in old cigar boxes and stacked into an igloo shape.

Later, the sled races began. Here again the engineering skills of the kids were put to the test as pretty much any household object could be made into a sled.

The most common was made from the round top of those old wringer type washing machines, the kind that had the two rollers on the top back that you had to pull the clothes thru to get excess water out of them before you could hang them up to dry.

Other effective sleds were made from trash can lids, cafeteria trays, cardboard boxes, big wide metal biscuit or baking pans and inner tubes cut in half.

Theodore, the boy who lived next door to me, would use an old door with a rope tied thru each end of the top to make a sled big enough to hold three kids. You talk about fun in the snow, we kids had it locked down!

The best part of the snow day was eating snow cream. We made it by taking fresh, clean snow and added evaporated milk, sugar and vanilla and mixing it together in a very large bowl. But you couldn’t just use any snow. Most people waited for the snow to fall for a few hours.  Then you had to dig under the top layer of snow to get the snow for the snow cream. You mixed everything together, it was so good!

These are the fond memories that keep me good company wherever snow is predicted for this area.