Snow was good for so many
things. The first thing to be done was to collect the newly fallen
snow for making 'snow-cream'. It had to be new snow, collected in pans set out
by the kitchen door so it wouldn't be too contaminated by radioactive residue
(hey ... this was the early sixties, when the cold war was in it's prime, and
remember I said we had wild imaginations). When full, the pans of snow were
brought into the kitchen and sprinkled with sugar, vanilla and cream. Ahhhh, rememberances of things past ... the smell of vanilla.
Snow was also useful for snowballs, snow forts and tunnels, sledding, keeping one
home from school, and just going outside to see how different the world was when
blanketed in snow.
A couple of years ago I had put
strings of colored lights on the two young blue spruce trees by the front porch.
I put a few random blinkers in with a set of steady burners ... just a
few to make them twinkle. The night I'm thinking of was Christmas eve and it had
been snowing since afternoon. It was one of those dampish snows that form
a heavy mantle on tree branches, rooftops and just about anything that wasn't
moving fast enough to shake it off.
I opened the front door and
out in the dark the colored lights on the spruce trees were half
buried under shelves of snow and twinkling through the snowy crystals. I was
transfixed at the sight. I stood out on the porch looking at the lights covered
with snow and remembered.
Carol McLeod
