I looked out my window this morning and saw the snowflakes coming down. A brief moment of glee followed by a moment of panic. Winter is coming. I sound like a Game of Thrones fan saying that. But it is true. Winter is coming. I have a love/hate relationship with winter. I know a lot of us do.
In my youth I thought winter was wonderful. It may be just nostalgia speaking but I seem to remember more big snows back then and very few freezing rain events. Cars parked on the streets were buried in snow and you could only see their rooftops. I always enjoyed taking hikes after a snowstorm, once roads were plowed and cindered. Do they still put cinders on roads, or just salt? I would hike down along the creek and up into the slate dumps (the huge mountains of waste slate) that were just outside of town.
We would ice skate on a slate quarry that was only a block or two from Main Street. The PennLynn quarry. I always wondered who decided if it was okay to skate on there. If it wasn’t okay, it would be extremely dangerous as those quarries are deep, deep, deep. Interestingly, the quarry is no longer there. It was filled in at some point and is now part of the borough maintenance complex.
If we weren’t ice skating we were sledding. Shooky’s path was our place to sled. It was a very steep hill behind North Street near the end of Willow Avenue. All the neighborhood kids were there. Our sledding path actually crossed a working rail line! The borough also closed some streets for sledding, but that wasn’t as much fun.
My good attitude toward winter started to change when I started driving. To this day, I hate driving in snow, sleet, or freezing rain. I remember one of the first times I drove during a snowstorm, I lost control coming down First Street in Slatington and crashed into a fence. Yeah, not the best at winter driving.
I am also not a big fan of the cold. I think as I have gotten older I find it harder to get and stay warm. Maybe that is why my best friend recently announced a move to Florida!
Well, it is snowing even harder now! It is very pretty against the pine trees in my back yard. That is one thing you can say about snow…it is pretty. That’s the only good thing to say about it!
I am ending this post on a winter positive note. Since I am semi-retired, and only work two days a week, my encounters with winter driving will be fewer. If it snows on a Monday, Tuesday, Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, I can just look out the window, pull my bedcovers up, and either go back to sleep or jump into the warmth of a good book.
A Semi-retired Kind of Life 