The Lake Today

There was some talk at work the other day about the coming winter and how we all hoped it wasn’t as bad as last year. And, although last winter here in the Ozarks was certainly one for the books and I basically hated every minute of snow and cold, it still didn’t measure up to my memories of the snowfalls we experienced in my childhood.

Of course, when I look back at the actual snowfall amounts during those years, the numbers don’t really match my memories. So maybe those snowfalls seemed so much bigger because I was a great deal shorter than I am now, but whatever the reason there is one winter storm that will always stand out in mind as producing the best snowfall of my entire childhood.

I was in the third or fourth grade that January, when the snow began falling during the evening and kept it up all night. The next morning the snow stopped, but the wind picked up and the drifts began forming. Our house set on top of a hill that sloped down on both sides and in front to the roadway. When my ancestors built the driveway rather than having to traverse a steep slope to enter the farm, they dug the driveway down to the road’s level, so you entered the property through a sort of trench with embankments of six or eight feet on either side.

Since the house faced east, the minute those winds started blowing that trench-like driveway began filling up with snow. By noon the winds had stopped and although the driveway wasn’t completely filled with snow, there were drifts coming off the north bank that resembled great, sculpted glaciers.

Since there was no school, Dad put us kids to the task of shoveling the driveway so the bus would be able to pick us up when classes reopened the next day.

We began shoveling about 1 p.m. and it wasn’t long before we discovered that if we were careful how we dug, we could create fantastic caves, tunnels and snow forts in those “glacier” walls that were perfect for staging snowball fights.

At first Mom patrolled us pretty good and every time the shoveling slowed and the snowball fight picked up she would come out of the house and “encourage” us to get back to work. But when the snow began to fall again by mid afternoon and it became obvious that we would be out of school several more days, she decided that since it would take more than us shoveling to clear the drive she might as well let us have our fun.

Although we spent the next two or three hours in the driveway, the only snow we shoveled was what filled our forts each time one of those “glaciers” collapsed on top of us.

The snow stopped that evening and the next morning county road grader made the turn into our driveway and completely demolished all that remained of our forts. But all these years later, I can still remember the fun we had that day playing in our own personal “arctic glaciers” and just how warm and lovely the house felt when Mom finally called us in to supper.