Winter Joys

It's Sunday, January 12, and it's snowing. The weather man says it's one of those northeaster kinds of storms, and we're going to get a lot of wind and snow. Lots and lots of snow. This kind of news on a Sunday makes the weekend even sweeter, because it looks like there's a good chance that there won't be any school tomorrow.
Snow days! Every school kid's dream in the winter. A free day to do whatever you want or get out and go sledding or build a snow fort or have a giant snowball fight over on Freund's cliff.
The snow is really coming down and the wind is picking up. Carl and I watch the flakes swirling around from our upstairs bedroom window. The white stuff is piling up, and the wind is pushing it around, forming huge drifts in the side yard. I'm twelve years old now, so I'll have to help Dad shovel the driveway so he can get to work. How he's going to drive in this stuff is a mystery to me, but the railroad never closes.
We get outside in the wind and snow, but it's hard to have any fun when the weather is this bad. Carl and I are wet and sloppy from it all, and Mom says we'll have to wait until tomorrow before we can go out again.
My brother and I content ourselves with board games and comic books the rest of the day, pausing to look out the window now and again to see how the snow is piling up. Yeah, school will be canceled for sure.
It's easy to sleep that night, knowing that we won't have to get up and get ready for school.
We still have to get out of bed the next morning and listen to Ken Garland on the radio or watch Wee Willie Webber on TV reading out the school closings.
We listen intently, and then there it is: Woodbury Heights Public School - CLOSED, and the day is ours.
Oh, the choices on a snow day are endless. It's unplanned time off, so we get to pick what to do.
Going back to sleep is an option, and it's tempting, but for once I can watch Wee Willie till the end, and then catch re-runs of shows like My Little Margie or Our Miss Brooks or even The Bob Cummings Show.
I look outside and see that it's still snowing and the winds have picked up even more. It's cold and windy and snowing. The radio says it's a blizzard caused by the northeaster stalling off the coast, and it will last for a couple of days. A couple of days! We might get more than one day off out of this - a dream come true.
I struggle to help my father dig the car out, and I wonder how he's going to manage to get to work in a blizzard. He's got to go I hear him say, and he's taking some clothes with him in case he can't get back.
We'll all worry about him until he calls us to say he made it in safe and sound.
Carl and I decide to play with the Big Caesar Roman galley he got for Christmas. We use the Encyclopedia for Children as land, the bare tile floor of our bedroom will be the ocean. My Robin Hood knights will battle the Romans and try and capture the galley, in a bizarre battle that never could have happened in real life. Carl and his army win the day; my knights are no match for the legions of Rome.
The snow isn't letting up and the winds are howling and making more and more drifts. When I can get outside again I'll have to dig out the driveway once more.
We do get outside for a while and try to make a snow man, but it's no use, the weather isn't cooperating. Back inside and Campbell's Chicken Noodle soup and hot chocolate.
Carl and I will play Mouse Trap and Stratego, and I'll set up a Civil War battle with my Marx Blue and Gray toy soldiers.
The day is bliss, and the weather isn't getting any better, so we can go to sleep pretty much knowing that there won't be any school on Tuesday either.
Tuesday morning it's still snowing, but it's not as windy, but there is no school! A four day weekend, and it's snowing and we've got another day all to ourselves.
The snow begins to let up, and we can get out and enjoy it. It's one of those snows that leaves a thick crust on the top layer, and we try to walk across the side yard without punching through it. You take a few steps, and then the snow cracks, and your boot is down in the soft powdery stuff, and your feet are getting soaked.
We make a snow man with our neighbors Susie and Paul Avis, and try sledding down some of the larger drifts in the yard. Not as fun as Chestnut Hill, but it's too difficult to get over there right now.
Carl and I spend some of the afternoon over at the Avis house playing with Paul and Susie and their Play-doh fun factory, extruding clay bricks and other shapes.
The sky begins to clear and the winds start to die down, and we hope the roads aren't cleared enough for school to re-open tomorrow.
Our luck runs out, and school isn't closed on Wednesday morning.
It was a great run though, four days off in the middle of January watching the snow fall and listening to the wind howl.
Such joy, such pleasure.
Such warmth in all that cold.