Friday, March 29, 2024
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One Must Have a Mind of Winter

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When we in the East got that whopper of a snowstorm last week, my friend Ron, a longtime Californian, posted the following on Facebook:

“The eternal little kid in me gets excited every time I see that NYC is getting tons of snow…Here I am hoping school gets cancelled and we can meet up on suicide hill with our sleds!”

Like Ron, I haven’t lived in New York or been a schoolboy or sledded on Suicide Hill in decades, yet feel that same thrill.

Growing up on Long Island, my first Suicide Hill was a slope adjacent to a Cross Island Parkway interchange. 

My second was an embankment above the Susquehanna River in Binghamton, New York. My sled was a vinyl couch cushion. Its squishiness made it comfortable to sit on and easy to steer: Lift the left front corner and it would go right; lift the right front corner and it would go left.

The “suicidal” dimension of the experience had to do with the nearness of the river and the lack of brakes on a couch cushion. An icy dip taught me to roll off, dig in my heels and clutch the cushion, so neither I nor it would get swept to Pennsylvania.

**

Whenever I shovel my driveway I recall shoveling with my dad, a no-nonsense activity until one of us “accidentally” heaved snow at the other. Then it became a nonsense activity. “Of course you know this means war!” my dad would proclaim.

Pivoting from an English to a Yiddish accent, he would plead his case to an imaginary jury: “You see how a son treats his father?” 

Then he’d dump another shovelful on my head. 

When at last we got the driveway cleared, we’d go inside, all aglow, and make peace over bowls of Campbell’s soup and a sleeve of Ritz crackers.

**

The thrill of a snow day has a double resonance. I think of my own long-ago childhood, but I also think of winters when my children were in school. As the family’s earliest riser, my job was to tune in WPSU and wait for Bruce Fleischer to announce the day’s school closures and delays. 

The list was in alphabetical order, which heightened the suspense as Fleischer made his way from Bald Eagle and Bellefonte down through Keystone and Moshannon Valley and eventually to State College. 

Closed! I’d bound up the stairs, awakening my three sleepyheads with the news that they could sleep in. “Yes!” Ethan would say in a fervent, whispery voice with a downward pull on his clenched fist.

I’d return to my coffee and newspaper, amused at my own excitement, given that I had to do all the work I would normally have to do, plus shovel the snow. 

Ours was a corner house, which, as you corner householders well know, meant clearing the sidewalk in front of the house and then clearing the sidewalk along the side of the house. I always claimed not to mind shoveling, but when I looked outside and saw that one of my three corner lot-owning neighbors had finished snow-blowing their sidewalks and started on mine, I didn’t exactly rush out there and tell them they needn’t. 

Why spoil their fun? From what I’ve observed, snow blower owners enjoy their toys so much that given the fuel, they’d merrily clear Interstate 80 from the New Jersey Turnpike to the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. 

Then too, even if Rich or Brian or Scott did my sidewalks – in exchange for a tin of brownies or an invitation to our weekly soup nights — I still got ample exercise shoveling the driveway and the paths to the front and back doors.

**

Which brings me to my old friends the Woo People. It shouldn’t have surprised me that the fraternity brothers down the block did not form a shovel brigade the morning after a snowstorm. They were closer in age to my kids than they were to Rich, Brian, Scott or me, which made them more likely to sleep until noon than bounce out of bed at first light to clear a path for us working folk.

But oh how I wanted to roust them and point out that each of them could shovel one lousy square of sidewalk and get the whole job done in 10 minutes. Instead, I wrote a Dr. Seussian column called “The Brats in the Frats,” which I’m sure none of them read, but of which I remain inordinately fond. First lines: 

This was no time for sleep.

 This was no time for beer.

 This was no time for sloth.

 There was sidewalk to clear.

May you have joy by the shovelful this hard but hopeful holiday season.  

 

“The Brats in the Frats” is included in Russell Frank’s column collection, “Among the Woo People,” which you can order from Webster’s Bookstore Cafe, among other places.