Nov 25, 2003 4 min read

What did you do this weekend? I can’t say it had grown a lot but it was certainly higher than I like to see it. So, I cut the grass. And the day before I hauled the dog out and gave her a bath. I also took a walk around the yard, assessing what needed tended to and what didn’t. I may have been lulled into thinking I still have plenty of time to care for outside matters before winter finally (if ever) sets in. I mean, we have had some of the nicest days all year recently (aside from our freak flooding last week).

But it’s November, you say?

It is, isn’t it?

And a far cry from the one that saw me come into this world, or so I am told.

On Nov. 28 it will be 53 years since one of the worst snow storms this area has ever seen pummeled and buried the landscape in not inches, but feet, of snow and ice. In fact, it may even be the worst storm in those 53 years. I can only repeat what I have been told since during the wintry crisis of 1950 I was snuggled up warm in a basinet in the local hospital.

It was the storm to end all storms. In the town where I grew up people showed me photos, once they learned what month and year I was born, of their family car sitting in front of their home. Only you couldn’t tell it was a car. Nothing more than a snow mound is all the aged, cracked photo showed. That’s how deep the stuff piled up. There was apparently a good deal of wind, which blew the snow into smothering drifts. My mother recalls this time of year how she, my older brother (who would have been about 2 at the time) and my grandmother huddled together in the master bedroom listening to the howling outside. My grandmother, I’m told, was terrified my mother was going to deliver me then and there.

Where was Dad? Well, he was trapped a few miles away at his parents’ home, unable due to the storm, to drive home. He had tried and quickly got his vehicle stuck. Somehow, he managed to get my mother and grandmother to the hospital the next day. He spent the next week on a bulldozer freeing roads from the clutches of winter’s absolute worst roads so the world could begin moving again.

I have no idea of how harrowing it was, since I was totally oblivious to anything other than infant hunger pains and the beginnings of life on the outside (No, I don’t remember that. I’m just guessing).

But I sure have heard a lot about it for the past five decades plus. Especially the annual phone call from my mother reminding me that I’m still her “little snow bunny.’ Yech. But what can I do?

Since the day I arrived I have had a love-hate relationship with snow. I don’t think it has anything to do with the weather when I came into this world. I think it just shows what the stuff means to us all at the different levels of interest and age we find ourselves in. I mean when I was a kid, I loved the stuff. Loved to run in it. Loved to jump in it. Loved to roll around in it.

There was no more satisfying exercise to a kid of 7, 9 or even 12 than having to remove snow soaked pants, coats, hats and gloves after several hours of outdoor play. The more, the better, I always thought, certainly when there was so much we got an unexpected winter holiday from school.

Even as a teen-ager I still liked the stuff. And in my early adult years I had an absolute passion for snow as a cross-country skier.

But something happened. Maybe I had had enough of it. Maybe the novelty finally wore off. I came to hate snow, the mess, the cold and slush and the slime that result from frigid weather.

Of course spending two decades living in the mountains didn’t help. It seemed like winter was the longest season there. I used to get mad the first day it snowed and didn’t calm down until a week into spring.

But I’m not very concerned about that now. Not when I’m cutting grass just days away from the anniversary of one of the worst snowstorms in history. In fact, it just proves the truth of a saying I came up with some years ago.

It goes like this: “One more day like this is one less day like that.’

I’m sure you can figure it out. Enjoy the weather. Have a good day.

Jim Pletcher is the Herald-Standard’s business editor. E-mail: jpletcher@heraldstandard.com.