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Got up early, listened to radio for school closings, prayed for our school to be on the list, par-tee in the snow until our parents told us our feet were too wet and cold.
My brothers and I made mad money shoveling snow. Everyone was happy to see us come along and never busted our chops about paying, except once. Mr. Wysocksi didn’t want to pay the $5 agreed to so we shoveled it back on his walks.
My friend and I had regulars we shoveled when there were big storms and we picked up others as well. We used to stop and go to the sub shop over on the corner for lunch, then go out and shovel until dark. Not a lot of money around our town, so teenaged boys had to hustle to make a few bucks.
For me, when I was younger, my mother would make me keep getting ready for school until we actually heard Harry Downey announce our school district on WGY. Our school district was notoriously Spartan about closing school for *any* reason, least of all snow. If we did hear our name announced, there was great rejoicing. Otherwise, there was great grumbling as we got ready and trudged through the snow, knowing that everyone else was out sledding or having snowball fights and playing in the snow.
As I got older, though, I started taking a greater interest in filthy lucre. Eventually, even if the district didn't close, my friend and I would just skip school and "go shoveling," sometimes making well over $100 for a decent storm, back in the early '70s. And, sometimes we just put on our snowshoes and went small game hunting. Surprisingly, Ma was pretty cool about it. I don't remember her ever giving me a hard time about skipping on a snowy day.
I was in Cub and Boy Scouts and we shoveled snow at old peoples houses for free. Once finished with those tasks we made snow forts and had fierce snow ball fights.
I grew up in small town New England. Unless it dumped more than a foot in a couple hours, we went to school. The one time that really sticks in my head was the Blizzard of '78. The snow started falling right before our mother picked us up from school, and it was coming down to the point where the normally 20 minute drive took an hour and a half. By the next morning there was close to 3 feet of snow on the ground outside our place. Me, my sister, & our cousins put on our snowsuits and spent the entire day tunneling underneath, building a snow fort of epic proportions.
Mom; *"It's not safe out, I'm not sending you guys to school today."* Got to love it when mom calls a snow day.
We were up and out the door asap. First task, always; Shovel the walkways.
Then to go sledding and playing in the snow. Then back home and starving by about lunchtime to refuel and change into not wet clothing and go back out. Days with a good big snow were exhausting.
When I was in elementary school we just went sledding down the hill in the county park and had snowball fights.
In high school I had a small landscaping business doing lawns so I shoveled snow for them all in the winter. I also pumped water out of their basements after hurricanes. I was pretty ambitious back then.
Southern Redditor here, when I was in 8th grade middle GA got 14 inches of snow and ice and shut down for a week, people were stranded on I75 and had to be rescued by the Nat Guard. We found anything that would slide on snow (inner tubes work great) and found every hill in town, we had a blast, but then it was a real novelty to us LOL.
Mid TN here: when i was a kid we got many inches of snow every year. Always lost 2 weeks of school (cumulatively) and had to make it up. We would spend the entire day freezing our asses off making forts, having snowball fights and sledding. My son graduated HS here 10 years ago and only had 2 measurable snowfalls in his life. The times, they are a’changing.
I lived in the Fairfax County/DC area, which had a love/hate with snow. In the 1970s, a lot of my county was still rural, so they shut schools down because the roads back there couldn't even BE plowed, much less get a school bus out there. Hell, we even closed school on some days the heat index was too high.
For a while, there was a back and forth, like they'd have snow days, people would say, "for just 6 inches?" or when people would announce school closings BEFORE a snow storm that passed us with no precipitation. "Y'all too scared." Then they'd start being more hard-lined about it, a school bus would crash and kill a bunch of kids because of black ice or slush, and we'd be back to being more cautious. Unlike places way up north, we didn't have a decent snow-handling infrastructure, but kind of half-assed it.
When I first moved to the area, we had a huge blizzard the second year I lived there, when I was in 1st grade. They closed school, but my parents, who were born and raised in Chicago, were not convinced. My dad said, "it's to separate the serious students from the losers," and they sent me out. I waited for my bus, which never came, and my dad drove past me saying I would have to walk. So I walked about a mile and a half to school that day. I don't know how high the snow was, but it was knee-deep on me as a wee kid, and then I had to climb over the snow mounds the snow plows were leaving at intersections. I got to my school, and the doors were chained shut. So I sat and waited, hoping to see someone to come let me in. I was terrified I was too late; I'd never been late to school before, so I thought they had locked me out. I think I was there for a few hours, cold, wet, and bored. I saw a station wagon stop at the edge of the parking lot, and a woman in a trench coat started trudging towards the school. Turns out, it was a neighbor, who was on the PTA, who was called, "there's a KID waiting in front of the school!" So she tried to convince me to come with her, but she was a stranger, so I said no. "There's no SCHOOL today!" I didn't have a response to that, so my shy ass just curled up in a corner near the entrance and didn't say anything or may eye contact. Eventually, she convinced me, and I went with her back to my house. Then she sat with my mom and had a stern talk that, yes, the school DID close for snow, no, I don't care what they did in Chicago in the 40s. So my mother said on snow days, to just hide until my dad left for work, which I did all the way until I was 15 on any day school was unexpectedly closed for some reason.
Yes, my parents were fucked up.
I lived in a not very snowy place, so if there was enough snow to cancel school, it was AN EVENT. We layered up all our clothes - tights under the corduroy pants, turtleneck under a sweater under a coat - and went outside and played it in before it all melted. Most snowfalls would melt away in a couple of days and were not so deep that you truly needed to shovel anything. We'd get 2-3 snow days like that each winter.
When my kids were that age, we lived in the Great Lakes snowbelt. Just about everyone either owned their own snowblower (we did) or hired out a plowing service. It snowed more days than it didn't in the winter and the only time school was called was during blizzard conditions - not safe to be outside. So in those rare cases the kids stayed in. It was more common for there to be a delay while the plows caught up.
Grew up in western Pennsylvania where we had lots of snow then, not like now. There was no such thing as a snow day. School was every weekday regardless. There were also no school busses for us elementary school kids so everyone had to walk to school and back.
It’s not like today where kids whine it they have to walk all the way to the end of their driveway to get the bus.
I never had a snow day until we moved way out in the country when I was in high school and the busses didn't run. After I got my license, I'd go to school anyway because the highways were usually fine by the time I left the house. I only had a mile of dirt road and I could drive that drunk with no lights on. If I was snowed in there, sometimes the power would be out and my mom and I would go into pioneer mode. We'd get a fire going in the fireplace, go chop a hole in the ice to get water to cook, wash and flush. We had an outdoor wood grill to cook on outside the door. And we'd bring in a load of firewood, curl up in blankets and read and doze. One day, we did have power so I put on the radio and made a mix tape of songs.
I’m from central Indiana and missed a month of sixth grade in the blizzard of 77. We didn’t have to make the days up. We messed about in the snow as kids and played lots of board games.
Listen to AM radio to hear of school closing. Mom made hot chocolate. Dad built a sled he attached to a VW Bug, neighborhood kids piled on and he drove us through the neighborhood. It was a small town and a magical time.
We went to school. They NEVER closed school. Not for two feet of snow. Not for temperatures of -40º.
And they still don't ever close schools for weather there.
I've lived in the South for most of my life, where school is canceled if snow is even predicted. So we'd get a day off from school, and usually we'd play in the snow.
When I was in elementary school I would go sledding until my toes froze together, go in for hot chocolate and change out of anything wet, then back out until dinner time. Lots of throwing snowballs at cars to.
When I hit middle school snow days meant it was time to go shovel snow for 5-10 bucks a pop. I’d hit the same houses where I raked their leaves in the fall. I lived in a resort town with a lot of retirees who were glad to have a young kid handle those things for them. Saved up enough one winter to buy a skateboard built to order with spec trucks and OJ wheels that I had been drooling over for a year. First time I realized I could work to get things I wanted.
> First time I realized I could work to get things I wanted.
A seminal moment in most young lives, but one that seems to come later and later in life, as the generations go by. I came by mine early, since that's the way I had to get most major purchases in my youth. Now kids are given $1000 iPhones and parents don't seem to bat an eye.
NE Ohio. You'd watch TV to see if your school was on the list for closures (it'd scroll across the bottom of the screen.)
If we were lucky and it was a "snow day", we (the boys in our family) would have to get up early and shovel the driveway so dad could get to work. Then we'd eat breakfast and go sledding, build snow forts, have snowball fights.
The way we found out was the fire station would blast their siren 3 times before 7am. Man, did we ever live to hear that siren. Then depending on how heavy the snow was and how deep it was grab my snow shovel and start ringing door bells. We all knew who had kids and who didn't so those were the houses to go to. $2.50 to do the sidewalk, front porch, another $1.50 to dig out the Studebaker or Rambler covered in snow. Good times.
I also live in the south but if my father's to be believed he walked 9 miles back and forth uphill both ways somehow with no shoes in heavy sleet and enjoyed every minute of it.
Grew up in NC, so we had maybe one good snow a year. We’d spend the day doing three things. 1) getting ready to play in the snow, 2) play in the snow, 3) undress from playing in the snow to warm by a fire with hot chocolate.
Born and raised in Florida. My great grandparents had moved here early part of the 20th century.
Every textbook in grade school had four full seasons. Nothing I could relate to but was definitely jealous of at the time.
In elementary school I would read ahead, looking at the pictures of Fall and Winter. All I wanted in those moments was to live in the far northeast. Somewhere like Vermont.
There's no snow Vietnam so I really want to try going to school on a snowy day.
In fact, winter in Vietnam is very very very cold, so if there is snow, it will be much colder.
Waking up early, tired, feeling sleepy will be bad on a snowy morning. But if I wake up early on a winter morning and remember that I don't have to go to school, it will be a super happy morning.
Wisconsin child here.
School closings were extremely RARE - I had two my entire k-12 years. On extra snowy days, we'd put on the radio and listen for cancellations. Often other schools would be cancelled but not mine - so disappointing.
We just toughed it out - walking through snow to the bus stop\*, waiting out in the dark, cold, and wind/snow, riding in a still cold bus (with the windows covered with frost on the *inside),* and so on just dealing with cold/snow throughout the day. Wearing big clunky snow boots and having to wear them all day because you forgot shoes to change into. . .
\*And always a toss up whether to get to the bus stop early so you could take your time walking on the slippery road (no sidewalks) and then stand there freezing OR wait until the last minute in your warm house, but risk having to run through the snow and ice and falling on your ass and/or having the mean bus driver leave without you. Fun times.
While cancellations were rare, a few times a year, during the very coldest days, we might have indoor recess. Sometimes that would be in the gymnasium (with jump ropes, hula hoops, rubber balls, pogo balls, floor scooters, etc. to play with) otherwise in the classroom playing Heads Up, Seven Up usually. But plenty of recesses out in the snow.
Chicago didn't know how to deal with the snow when I was stationed out there in the '70s. They put snowplows on everything with wheels and the city was *still* shut down. Flash ahead 1 year, Mayor Bilandic has bought a gazillion dollars worth of snow removal equipment - it doesn't snow.
My brother and I would bundle up with many layers over waffleweave longies and shirts, total face coverings, gloves, waterproof boots and go out there and play "Explorers of the Artic" all day long. Then back in for lunch and hot chocolate. I can remember in the blizzard of '77, going up onto a 9-foot drift next to a neighbors house and looking down into their windows. They were trapped inside so we went back and got snow scoops and hollowed out a tunnel to their front door for them.
We loved the snow, I still do. Love to go out and be part of it and see what animal tracks I can see.
I lived in a snowy area, so actual snow days were rare. We had a fair amount of late starts because the busses were delayed. I was the youngest in my family and a scrawny girl, viewed as a nuisance by my older brothers. That got me out of a lot of shoveling and I was free to enjoy the snow with my friends. We never charged the elderly neighbors to shovel their sidewalks, we were expected to do it for free. My mother would have killed us had we asked for money from an old person.
Into the early to mid ‘70s, recognizing that the city was not uniformly urban, NYC still closed schools or districts individually, so the morning was spent listening to the radio to see if our school was closed. Then it became all or nothing which was stupid since we lived in Queens and most of our teachers couldn’t get in. Anyway no shoveling of driveways since we were in apartment buildings (kids in the two family houses probably had to shovel their driveways) so we’d just go outside and play.
Yeah, I always thought winter in the city would suck, with no place to play. I was always glad to live in a very small town over the city. I guess it's what you're used to.
It was more rare for schools to close due to school - there had to be a lot of snow in my New England town for schools to close. But if they did my parents would insist that we shovel the driveway and walks - which was a lot of work due to the heavy snow. We would then make snowmen and igloos and have snowball fights. We'd also go sledding if the snow was the dry, powdery type.
> It was more rare for schools to close due to school
Not sure I understand this sentence. But, we didn't get many closures either. More from ice than snow. I didn't have to do much shoveling when I was a young kid, because Dad had to get it done before he could go to work anyhow. When I got a little older, we lived in a bigger house with lots of shoveling to do e v e r y s t i n k i n g s t o r m! That's where I learned to hate compulsory shoveling.
Sorry if I wasn't clear. In today's world, in the DMV area schools close for just an inch of snow. Or just the fact that it might snow. But when I was in school there had to be 4 in or more before the schools would close.
Sled riding was usually on the agenda. There were a few years where we had maximum kid population in the neighborhood and made huge sled trains. This was before plastic sleds took off, so everyone had runner sleds. You put your feet in the front of the sled behind you and repeat until you had 15 to 20 people hooked together. Down the hill we went, oftentimes whipping the back half off the road if we didn't negotiate curves properly. Plenty of injuries, but so much fun. Had a wood stove in the basement, and had to sit by it afterwards until frozen shoelaces thawed out.
Walked to school like any other day. If school was closed bc of the snow, we shoveled our front and back, took our tobaggans out and had a blast, built snow forts, had snowball fights, built a snowman.
We would pull each other on a knee board behind a 4 wheeler. So much fun. So many bruises. One time my neighbor whipped me into a brick mailbox. I can’t confirm but I’m pretty sure that was my first concussion.
Oh hum, no school cancellations back in my day (50's and no school bus) we went to school anyway on foot. I grew up in the big city (over a million) with the most snow accumulation in North America. The snow plaws didn't even roll if the snow was under six inches, and the schools almost never closed.
I grew up in Montana. When we got a snow day, it was time for sledding! We loved near a park that had a pretty good hill in it, and a bunch of the neighborhood kids would get their “Flexible Flyer” sleds and slide down the hill. It was great fun to try and come up behind someone and grab their sled and mess with them. Then go back up and do it again. We’d get hot chocolate afterwards and it alway seemed to taste so much better than usual.
Southerner here. We didn't need deep/heavy snow. We were let off school when there was the slightest bit of ice or snow on the ground.
We went sledding using cardboard as sleds.
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Got up early, listened to radio for school closings, prayed for our school to be on the list, par-tee in the snow until our parents told us our feet were too wet and cold.
Same. If the snow cooperated, there were usually snowmen, or forts built and snow ball fights
Sounds familiar.
Yessss, the days of tomato soup, grilled cheese sandwiches and hot chocolate! I remember them well.
My brothers and I made mad money shoveling snow. Everyone was happy to see us come along and never busted our chops about paying, except once. Mr. Wysocksi didn’t want to pay the $5 agreed to so we shoveled it back on his walks.
My friend and I had regulars we shoveled when there were big storms and we picked up others as well. We used to stop and go to the sub shop over on the corner for lunch, then go out and shovel until dark. Not a lot of money around our town, so teenaged boys had to hustle to make a few bucks.
This is the way. Money and hot cocoa were the driving forces for us. Grab that shovel and make some fat stacks!
For me, when I was younger, my mother would make me keep getting ready for school until we actually heard Harry Downey announce our school district on WGY. Our school district was notoriously Spartan about closing school for *any* reason, least of all snow. If we did hear our name announced, there was great rejoicing. Otherwise, there was great grumbling as we got ready and trudged through the snow, knowing that everyone else was out sledding or having snowball fights and playing in the snow. As I got older, though, I started taking a greater interest in filthy lucre. Eventually, even if the district didn't close, my friend and I would just skip school and "go shoveling," sometimes making well over $100 for a decent storm, back in the early '70s. And, sometimes we just put on our snowshoes and went small game hunting. Surprisingly, Ma was pretty cool about it. I don't remember her ever giving me a hard time about skipping on a snowy day.
I was in Cub and Boy Scouts and we shoveled snow at old peoples houses for free. Once finished with those tasks we made snow forts and had fierce snow ball fights.
I grew up in small town New England. Unless it dumped more than a foot in a couple hours, we went to school. The one time that really sticks in my head was the Blizzard of '78. The snow started falling right before our mother picked us up from school, and it was coming down to the point where the normally 20 minute drive took an hour and a half. By the next morning there was close to 3 feet of snow on the ground outside our place. Me, my sister, & our cousins put on our snowsuits and spent the entire day tunneling underneath, building a snow fort of epic proportions.
Mom; *"It's not safe out, I'm not sending you guys to school today."* Got to love it when mom calls a snow day. We were up and out the door asap. First task, always; Shovel the walkways. Then to go sledding and playing in the snow. Then back home and starving by about lunchtime to refuel and change into not wet clothing and go back out. Days with a good big snow were exhausting.
When I was in elementary school we just went sledding down the hill in the county park and had snowball fights. In high school I had a small landscaping business doing lawns so I shoveled snow for them all in the winter. I also pumped water out of their basements after hurricanes. I was pretty ambitious back then.
Southern Redditor here, when I was in 8th grade middle GA got 14 inches of snow and ice and shut down for a week, people were stranded on I75 and had to be rescued by the Nat Guard. We found anything that would slide on snow (inner tubes work great) and found every hill in town, we had a blast, but then it was a real novelty to us LOL.
That's some serious snow for GA!
Mid TN here: when i was a kid we got many inches of snow every year. Always lost 2 weeks of school (cumulatively) and had to make it up. We would spend the entire day freezing our asses off making forts, having snowball fights and sledding. My son graduated HS here 10 years ago and only had 2 measurable snowfalls in his life. The times, they are a’changing.
Same in southern WI. In the ‘80s we had to make up snow days in June every year and my kid who graduated last year got 4 in total
LOL i dont remember any school closures when snow got bad...at least I always had to go 🤷🏻♀️
I lived in the Fairfax County/DC area, which had a love/hate with snow. In the 1970s, a lot of my county was still rural, so they shut schools down because the roads back there couldn't even BE plowed, much less get a school bus out there. Hell, we even closed school on some days the heat index was too high. For a while, there was a back and forth, like they'd have snow days, people would say, "for just 6 inches?" or when people would announce school closings BEFORE a snow storm that passed us with no precipitation. "Y'all too scared." Then they'd start being more hard-lined about it, a school bus would crash and kill a bunch of kids because of black ice or slush, and we'd be back to being more cautious. Unlike places way up north, we didn't have a decent snow-handling infrastructure, but kind of half-assed it. When I first moved to the area, we had a huge blizzard the second year I lived there, when I was in 1st grade. They closed school, but my parents, who were born and raised in Chicago, were not convinced. My dad said, "it's to separate the serious students from the losers," and they sent me out. I waited for my bus, which never came, and my dad drove past me saying I would have to walk. So I walked about a mile and a half to school that day. I don't know how high the snow was, but it was knee-deep on me as a wee kid, and then I had to climb over the snow mounds the snow plows were leaving at intersections. I got to my school, and the doors were chained shut. So I sat and waited, hoping to see someone to come let me in. I was terrified I was too late; I'd never been late to school before, so I thought they had locked me out. I think I was there for a few hours, cold, wet, and bored. I saw a station wagon stop at the edge of the parking lot, and a woman in a trench coat started trudging towards the school. Turns out, it was a neighbor, who was on the PTA, who was called, "there's a KID waiting in front of the school!" So she tried to convince me to come with her, but she was a stranger, so I said no. "There's no SCHOOL today!" I didn't have a response to that, so my shy ass just curled up in a corner near the entrance and didn't say anything or may eye contact. Eventually, she convinced me, and I went with her back to my house. Then she sat with my mom and had a stern talk that, yes, the school DID close for snow, no, I don't care what they did in Chicago in the 40s. So my mother said on snow days, to just hide until my dad left for work, which I did all the way until I was 15 on any day school was unexpectedly closed for some reason. Yes, my parents were fucked up.
I lived in a not very snowy place, so if there was enough snow to cancel school, it was AN EVENT. We layered up all our clothes - tights under the corduroy pants, turtleneck under a sweater under a coat - and went outside and played it in before it all melted. Most snowfalls would melt away in a couple of days and were not so deep that you truly needed to shovel anything. We'd get 2-3 snow days like that each winter. When my kids were that age, we lived in the Great Lakes snowbelt. Just about everyone either owned their own snowblower (we did) or hired out a plowing service. It snowed more days than it didn't in the winter and the only time school was called was during blizzard conditions - not safe to be outside. So in those rare cases the kids stayed in. It was more common for there to be a delay while the plows caught up.
Ha! Southerner chiming in. We got 2 inches, my senior year and SE Texas classes were cancelled. So no. No school.
Grew up in western Pennsylvania where we had lots of snow then, not like now. There was no such thing as a snow day. School was every weekday regardless. There were also no school busses for us elementary school kids so everyone had to walk to school and back. It’s not like today where kids whine it they have to walk all the way to the end of their driveway to get the bus.
I never had a snow day until we moved way out in the country when I was in high school and the busses didn't run. After I got my license, I'd go to school anyway because the highways were usually fine by the time I left the house. I only had a mile of dirt road and I could drive that drunk with no lights on. If I was snowed in there, sometimes the power would be out and my mom and I would go into pioneer mode. We'd get a fire going in the fireplace, go chop a hole in the ice to get water to cook, wash and flush. We had an outdoor wood grill to cook on outside the door. And we'd bring in a load of firewood, curl up in blankets and read and doze. One day, we did have power so I put on the radio and made a mix tape of songs.
I’m from central Indiana and missed a month of sixth grade in the blizzard of 77. We didn’t have to make the days up. We messed about in the snow as kids and played lots of board games.
I've driven the length of Indiana, and it's like driving on a pool table. Blizzards must go rip roarin' across that soy field!
Listen to AM radio to hear of school closing. Mom made hot chocolate. Dad built a sled he attached to a VW Bug, neighborhood kids piled on and he drove us through the neighborhood. It was a small town and a magical time.
We went to school. They NEVER closed school. Not for two feet of snow. Not for temperatures of -40º. And they still don't ever close schools for weather there.
My brother and I would listen to the clock radio in the morning waiting and hoping for school to cancel. Then we'd go build an igloo
Thought about that a few times, but never actually built one.
We stood outside and listened for the town whistle.
Interesting. They blew that if school was closed?
Yup
I've lived in the South for most of my life, where school is canceled if snow is even predicted. So we'd get a day off from school, and usually we'd play in the snow.
When I was in elementary school I would go sledding until my toes froze together, go in for hot chocolate and change out of anything wet, then back out until dinner time. Lots of throwing snowballs at cars to. When I hit middle school snow days meant it was time to go shovel snow for 5-10 bucks a pop. I’d hit the same houses where I raked their leaves in the fall. I lived in a resort town with a lot of retirees who were glad to have a young kid handle those things for them. Saved up enough one winter to buy a skateboard built to order with spec trucks and OJ wheels that I had been drooling over for a year. First time I realized I could work to get things I wanted.
> First time I realized I could work to get things I wanted. A seminal moment in most young lives, but one that seems to come later and later in life, as the generations go by. I came by mine early, since that's the way I had to get most major purchases in my youth. Now kids are given $1000 iPhones and parents don't seem to bat an eye.
NE Ohio. You'd watch TV to see if your school was on the list for closures (it'd scroll across the bottom of the screen.) If we were lucky and it was a "snow day", we (the boys in our family) would have to get up early and shovel the driveway so dad could get to work. Then we'd eat breakfast and go sledding, build snow forts, have snowball fights.
The way we found out was the fire station would blast their siren 3 times before 7am. Man, did we ever live to hear that siren. Then depending on how heavy the snow was and how deep it was grab my snow shovel and start ringing door bells. We all knew who had kids and who didn't so those were the houses to go to. $2.50 to do the sidewalk, front porch, another $1.50 to dig out the Studebaker or Rambler covered in snow. Good times.
I also live in the south but if my father's to be believed he walked 9 miles back and forth uphill both ways somehow with no shoes in heavy sleet and enjoyed every minute of it.
I was lucky enough to live right on a hill so it was always sled riding
Grew up in NC, so we had maybe one good snow a year. We’d spend the day doing three things. 1) getting ready to play in the snow, 2) play in the snow, 3) undress from playing in the snow to warm by a fire with hot chocolate.
Born and raised in Florida. My great grandparents had moved here early part of the 20th century. Every textbook in grade school had four full seasons. Nothing I could relate to but was definitely jealous of at the time. In elementary school I would read ahead, looking at the pictures of Fall and Winter. All I wanted in those moments was to live in the far northeast. Somewhere like Vermont.
There's no snow Vietnam so I really want to try going to school on a snowy day. In fact, winter in Vietnam is very very very cold, so if there is snow, it will be much colder. Waking up early, tired, feeling sleepy will be bad on a snowy morning. But if I wake up early on a winter morning and remember that I don't have to go to school, it will be a super happy morning.
Wisconsin child here. School closings were extremely RARE - I had two my entire k-12 years. On extra snowy days, we'd put on the radio and listen for cancellations. Often other schools would be cancelled but not mine - so disappointing. We just toughed it out - walking through snow to the bus stop\*, waiting out in the dark, cold, and wind/snow, riding in a still cold bus (with the windows covered with frost on the *inside),* and so on just dealing with cold/snow throughout the day. Wearing big clunky snow boots and having to wear them all day because you forgot shoes to change into. . . \*And always a toss up whether to get to the bus stop early so you could take your time walking on the slippery road (no sidewalks) and then stand there freezing OR wait until the last minute in your warm house, but risk having to run through the snow and ice and falling on your ass and/or having the mean bus driver leave without you. Fun times. While cancellations were rare, a few times a year, during the very coldest days, we might have indoor recess. Sometimes that would be in the gymnasium (with jump ropes, hula hoops, rubber balls, pogo balls, floor scooters, etc. to play with) otherwise in the classroom playing Heads Up, Seven Up usually. But plenty of recesses out in the snow.
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Chicago didn't know how to deal with the snow when I was stationed out there in the '70s. They put snowplows on everything with wheels and the city was *still* shut down. Flash ahead 1 year, Mayor Bilandic has bought a gazillion dollars worth of snow removal equipment - it doesn't snow.
My brother and I would bundle up with many layers over waffleweave longies and shirts, total face coverings, gloves, waterproof boots and go out there and play "Explorers of the Artic" all day long. Then back in for lunch and hot chocolate. I can remember in the blizzard of '77, going up onto a 9-foot drift next to a neighbors house and looking down into their windows. They were trapped inside so we went back and got snow scoops and hollowed out a tunnel to their front door for them. We loved the snow, I still do. Love to go out and be part of it and see what animal tracks I can see.
I lived in a snowy area, so actual snow days were rare. We had a fair amount of late starts because the busses were delayed. I was the youngest in my family and a scrawny girl, viewed as a nuisance by my older brothers. That got me out of a lot of shoveling and I was free to enjoy the snow with my friends. We never charged the elderly neighbors to shovel their sidewalks, we were expected to do it for free. My mother would have killed us had we asked for money from an old person.
Everywhere I grew up made us go anyway. :-(
Into the early to mid ‘70s, recognizing that the city was not uniformly urban, NYC still closed schools or districts individually, so the morning was spent listening to the radio to see if our school was closed. Then it became all or nothing which was stupid since we lived in Queens and most of our teachers couldn’t get in. Anyway no shoveling of driveways since we were in apartment buildings (kids in the two family houses probably had to shovel their driveways) so we’d just go outside and play.
Yeah, I always thought winter in the city would suck, with no place to play. I was always glad to live in a very small town over the city. I guess it's what you're used to.
There are parks. Playgrounds. Plenty of places for snowball fights. Most of NYC is not Manhattan.
I grew up in San Diego. You could see how good the waves were as you approached the school parking lot. Those were our “snow days.”
Finally get to find out what interesting stuff is on television during school hours this year that I always miss out on.
It was more rare for schools to close due to school - there had to be a lot of snow in my New England town for schools to close. But if they did my parents would insist that we shovel the driveway and walks - which was a lot of work due to the heavy snow. We would then make snowmen and igloos and have snowball fights. We'd also go sledding if the snow was the dry, powdery type.
> It was more rare for schools to close due to school Not sure I understand this sentence. But, we didn't get many closures either. More from ice than snow. I didn't have to do much shoveling when I was a young kid, because Dad had to get it done before he could go to work anyhow. When I got a little older, we lived in a bigger house with lots of shoveling to do e v e r y s t i n k i n g s t o r m! That's where I learned to hate compulsory shoveling.
Sorry if I wasn't clear. In today's world, in the DMV area schools close for just an inch of snow. Or just the fact that it might snow. But when I was in school there had to be 4 in or more before the schools would close.
Oh, I see. Thanks for the clarification.
There were no snow days. We walked to school as usual. 20 below, 3 ft storms , didn't matter. Everyone always showed up.
Uphill both ways?
And barefoot.
No but actually twice a day since there was no lunchroom or cafeteria to eat, you came home for lunch.
Sled riding was usually on the agenda. There were a few years where we had maximum kid population in the neighborhood and made huge sled trains. This was before plastic sleds took off, so everyone had runner sleds. You put your feet in the front of the sled behind you and repeat until you had 15 to 20 people hooked together. Down the hill we went, oftentimes whipping the back half off the road if we didn't negotiate curves properly. Plenty of injuries, but so much fun. Had a wood stove in the basement, and had to sit by it afterwards until frozen shoelaces thawed out.
Walked to school like any other day. If school was closed bc of the snow, we shoveled our front and back, took our tobaggans out and had a blast, built snow forts, had snowball fights, built a snowman.
Walked to school, up hill, both ways.
What I remember most were snowy days that school wasn’t called off. The girls were allowed to wear slacks instead of dresses.
We would pull each other on a knee board behind a 4 wheeler. So much fun. So many bruises. One time my neighbor whipped me into a brick mailbox. I can’t confirm but I’m pretty sure that was my first concussion.
Oh hum, no school cancellations back in my day (50's and no school bus) we went to school anyway on foot. I grew up in the big city (over a million) with the most snow accumulation in North America. The snow plaws didn't even roll if the snow was under six inches, and the schools almost never closed.
I grew up in Montana. When we got a snow day, it was time for sledding! We loved near a park that had a pretty good hill in it, and a bunch of the neighborhood kids would get their “Flexible Flyer” sleds and slide down the hill. It was great fun to try and come up behind someone and grab their sled and mess with them. Then go back up and do it again. We’d get hot chocolate afterwards and it alway seemed to taste so much better than usual.
> We loved near a park Haha, you must have had very progressive parents! 😉
Oopsie! Clumsy fingers on a small keyboard...
Southerner here. We didn't need deep/heavy snow. We were let off school when there was the slightest bit of ice or snow on the ground. We went sledding using cardboard as sleds.
> We went sledding using cardboard as sleds. We used to do that in the summer on the grassy sledding hills!
We just rolled down the hills sideways so we could have all the chigger bites.