My mother with my older sister, my older brother and myself.
Library Writing Group
January 2018
A Childhood Snow Day
It seems fitting, as I look outside at our level two snow emergency, that today be the day I compose this coming Thursday’s offering for Writing Group because the topic is what we did as children during snow days. Childhood, for me, was the 1960’s. My mother did not work outside the home until we were in our teens. This resulted in our time being supervised rather closely whether there was snow or not.
Our electronics consisted of three channels on a black and white television and the time my mother allowed it to be turned on was limited. What programs we were allowed to watch was also closely monitored. For example, I was the only one of my friends who was not allowed to watch “Love American Style” because my mother felt it had sexual connotations. Soap Operas were also off limits and labeled as “trash”. No doubt, some television got watched when we were snowed in. Most likely something like an old Abbot and Costello movie would be turned on during the afternoon. Evening viewing might have been an episode of “Lost In Space.” and afterward we would have walked around saying “That does not compute” to each other. We also had records and a console stereo. The LP’s in the family collection, stored in one end of the console, which looked like a piece of furniture and took up a large portion of one wall in the living room, consisted of several Rodgers and Hammerstein soundtracks. Listening to them consisted of belting out lyrics to The Music Man, The Sound of Music or Oklahoma along with the characters in the productions. Radio was also at our fingertips. I had my own little transistor. Since we lived in the Midwest I listened to WLS Chicago and Larry Lujack.
As part of our upbringing, my sisters and I were taught sewing skills. Therefore it is highly likely that snow days included some time working on a sewing project. We made simple things with the sewing machine such as bean bags, aprons or hemming tea towels. Today tea towels are called dish towels and are terry cloth. Back then, our’s were made of cotton. We also had embroidery hoops with an assortment of needles and colored threads. We would iron a pattern onto a tea towel or white pillowcase and sit and embroidery along the pattern edges. My great-grandmother had taught me how to crochet at an early age so I had several crochet hooks and a selection of yarn available to work on creating an afghan or a scarf. None of these projects came out looking professional but they used up time and were fine motor skill and hand-eye coordination development 1960 style. Another skill we were required to develop was the ability to cook. No doubt a snow day would have included a batch of cookies.
Certainly, coloring books, paint by number books and sticker books were in our home, along with a large collection of reading books. We each had bookshelves in our room along with a stack of library books. All avid readers, my siblings and I could spend hours lost in a good book. The entire winter a card table was set up with a jigsaw puzzle on it. Everyone who walked by put a piece or two into the puzzle on their way. When one puzzle was completed it was put back in the box and another one was placed on the table. Board games and card games were often played. One card game we played was called spoons. Everyone took a spoon quietly from the table when a certain card combination was obtained in their hand and finally the spoons would all be gone and one person would be left without another single spoon on the table. People would keep playing the game until that last person would notice the spoons were all gone and then everyone would laugh at them. An example of a board game we often played was marbles. We would have five marbles in one color that we needed to move around the board from home to safe by rolling a dice. We could take a shortcut through the center if the dice numbers rolled lucky for us. If we were unlucky then along the way one of the other players would send our marble back home and we had to start the journey again. When that happened everyone would laugh at the person who got sent home. Hide thickening was an intricate part of growing up then. It was part of developing into a good sport.
These activities were the inclement weather plan. Whether it be a snowy day or a rainy day, or just dark out during the evening. Life was consistent in those days. We did not scramble off to a babysitter because school was closed. We still had to brush our teeth, comb our hair and get dressed. I did not like to play out in the snow although sometimes we were bundled up and sent out for a short time to get some fresh air by riding a sled down a small hill or building a snowman or a snow fort. I generally headed back to where it was warm as soon as I was allowed to, often with one mitten less than when I went out.
