Nostalgia and Thoughts: Snow Days

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Now that winter is coming at us faster than I want….. I am sure most of you remember that I Hate winter and cold and especially snow. Now that I am retired the snow isn’t a hindrance to getting to work, but I still don’t like it. If there is enough that I can’t or don’t want to get out I get cranky.

I was up early enough the other day to see the school buses going up the street and it made me think of going to school and how I hated winter then too. I grew up in town so never rode the school bus unless I went home with a friend on Friday night and I always thought that was a lot of fun to get to ride the bus.

During the school year I always walked to school, mom didn’t think that walking 4 blocks to the school was going to hurt me, no matter what the weather. The only time she drove me to school was if it had been snowing all night and there was 2- 3 feet on the ground.

That would have been the first advantage to living in the country and riding the bus to and from school everyday. The other plus was a snow day when there was a lot of snow during the night. If the school declared a snow day it was not anything like the snow days they have now.

A snow day for the Mullinville schools (in the 50’s-60’s) only applied to those living on the bus routes. They wouldn’t send the buses out to get those in the country. But they didn’t cancel school for those kids that were unlucky enough to live in town.

The town kids had school every day even if the buses didn’t run. By making the city kids come to school they could count it as a school day and we didn’t go longer in the spring to make it up.

Maybe the town kids should have been let out of school earlier in the spring. For every snow day that we went to school and they got to count it as a school day we should have had it off at the end of the school year. The country kids should have had to go to school then so it was counted as a school day.

Things didn’t get any better when I started working in a beauty salon. Now I was the one living about 4 miles from my work place but the customers who lived in the city thought I should find a way to get into town to fix their hair.

I would struggle down the hill on Monroe in the snow driving very very slow to get to the salon. Once I was there I’d start opening up the salon for the day and before I could accomplish that task I would start getting phone calls from the city women.

Most of them didn’t want to get out in the weather so they were canceling and I had to find them a spot somewhere else in a day or two to get their hair set or cut. When the last one canceled on that snowy day I shut down the shop, crawl back in the car and struggle to get home in the snow.

I was always glad to be back home and out of the snow but wished they would have called me at home early in the morning so I didn’t have to slip and slide down Monroe street to the shop.

When I opened my salon here at home I thought I would have it made when it came to a snow day. Since I was already home and the shop was in part of the garage, I thought if there was a lot of snow the ladies would cancel since I lived out side the city limits.

That was as far from the truth as you can get. Now that I was here and didn’t have to leave the house or get on the nasty roads, they didn’t cancel their appointments. Then we had to be sure we got the driveway cleared off and salted down so they could walk into the shop without falling.

Almost none of my customers canceled when I had the shop here at the house so I didn’t get to enjoy a snow day even then. Who ever said life wasn’t fair sure knew what they were talking about when it came to snow days. To Contact Sandy: [email protected]

Sandra Pugh

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