snow day

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It started snowing yesterday -- the second snowfall of this entire winter as I remember it. It came down in small flakes and weather stations were atwitter with its coming. Before you could say "Jack Robinson," the local high school declared that today would be a "snow day" -- a time when schools close because of the difficulty traveling. So my son gets to sleep in.

Five or six inches was the total by this morning. And while it is as hard for school administrators to see into the future as it is for anyone else (what if it had been 18 inches?), still there seems to be a softening of the mind going on: If it snows at all, everyone goes into panic mode. Massachusetts, it seems, has become like some southern state where an inch of snow taxes the resources and imagination of those used to a warmer environment.

Is kids' or adults' walking to a destination so outlandish? I know I wouldn't want to do it, but I'm an old fart. I remember walking a half mile or more, to and fro, through difficult, knee-deep snow in order to feed and water some cattle kept at the school I once went to. No one, not even I, thought anything about it. It had to be done and I just happened to be the person doing it.

My father used to say he could remember when hamburger was twenty-five cents a pound. I guess I'm not much different.
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