Back when I was your age (or not because I assume most readers are older than 13 and that’s the age I’m about to conjure a story from) we had blizzards in Massachusetts and school cancellation came hesitantly, only after an actual significant showing of snow.* This is New England after all, we have our own word in the dictionary to describe the caliber of storms we’re famous for.
Like that Blizzard of ’78 my parents have told me about every time it snows. The conversations go something like this,
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Me: Oh yay it’s snowing!
Dad: You call that snowing? Remember the blizzard of ’78 San’? (my dad usually calls my mom San’ as a nickname for Sandra)
Mom: Oh yes, we had to dig a tunnel across Scott Drive to reach Joyce’s house …
Me: A tunnel mom? Are you sure?
Mom: You know, a path, it was really high on both sides like Moses in the Red Sea!
Dad: The road wasn’t plowed for days, they had to finally get the National Guard to come in and do it for Christ’s sakes!
Mom: … and you remember Wayne from the corner, well he had a snowmobile and he went door to door in the neighborhood asking if people needed anything and ran back and forth to Sedell’s (pharmacy) like a maniac on that thing!
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I do remember the April Fools blizzard in 1997, and I’m sure it’s the one I’ll refer to when I’m a parent and it snows or when global warming has us growing palm trees in Plymouth and the whole Cape will be gone… Back in 1997, no one bothered canceling school in advance figuring the forecasters were out of their mind. It was 63 degrees the day before the storm hit. Pssh three feet of snow on April Fool’s Day? But it happened. And one whole glorious week of school was canceled. For the first week in April, we made forts and had snowball wars amongst the castles constructed out of the 12 foot mountains of snow plowed on the sides of our driveway!
Oh those were the days.
I had high hopes, and perhaps elicited a small prayer, for the Snowpocalypse predicted for this week to match that high-snow mark of my childhood in Southeastern Massachusetts. But no.
Though school was canceled (after it only rained all morning), the 12-16 inches anticipated amounted to barely a one inch dusting. (If only Al Kaprielian was still at the Doppler’s helm.) I didn’t even have to shovel my front stairs. And now that I’m an old and crotchety law student, I find the school cancellation more annoying than elating.
But, I suppose that’s the nature of living in New England. No one believes the forecasters when they accurately predict 3 feet of snow in April after it’s been 60 degrees all week, and everyone over prepares in anticipation of a wrongfully predicted foot of snow in mid-February after two weeks of being -6 out.
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*I was also convinced that my heavy amount of snow-induced-prayer played a role in the infrequent school cancellations assuming God kept annual records of my prayer frequency and noticed a massive spike every winter….
