Retreads!

No, not tires, posts. I've decided to go back in time and see what I wrote in past years on this date. I was just thinking about this post today, and, wouldn't you know it, this was originally posted way back in 2009 on this date. Here it is again. Enjoy!

 



Recently, due to the wonderful technology of Facebook, I have been getting back in contact with some of my high school friends. This post is dedicated to them, but I think all of you will enjoy it. The above picture was taken from our senior year book. I hope there is no copywrite!

I had to laugh today when President Obama made his comments about his girl's school closing because of snow. I had a similar experience when I first moved to TN. First let me tell you about snow in Pennsylvania. I lived in the small town of Clearfield, PA from 2nd grade until I graduated (really I grew up outside of Clearfield in the "Village of Glen Richey", but I'll save that for another post). Winters in PA began in November and lasted until around Easter and sometimes longer. I can remember when it would snow a foot or so, then have a few clear days but not above freezing, then we'd get another layer of snow, then have a few more clear days etc. etc. The snow drifts would sometimes be over my head! Of course that wasn't necessarily very high when you are nine years old, but you get the point. Do you think they ever canceled school? Never! One day I went out to go to school, stepped off of our front porch, and promptly fell down. There was a layer of ice on the sidewalk and no matter what, I couldn't get up. Mom thought I was joking until Grandpa came around the house. We lived on a small farm, and he had been down feeding the pigs. It seems he had fallen and slid all the way down the hill to the pig pen - slop buckets in hand. He promptly said "Get back in the house Tim. You're not going to school today!" Did they cancel school? Nope! Another time our bus had to go down a steep hill on a back country road. We started slipping down the hill until the bus was actually sliding sideways. Thankfully the road was not as wide as the length of the bus and the two ends of the bus got stuck in the opposite snow banks. The bus driver told us to get out and walk home, there was nothing she could do. We found out later that a local farmer came and pulled the bus out with his tractor. That is no joke! That really happened. It would never happen today!

Fast forward, twenty years, to when we first moved to Tennessee. One night it snowed and I woke up to a dusting of snow on the ground - what we would have called a "skiff" of snow in PA. After a while I heard the neighbor kids out playing so I went out to ask what was going on. They informed me that school had been called off. After I picked my jaw up off of the ground, I asked one of the parents about it. It seems that it doesn't snow enough in TN to warrant counties buying all of the snow plows, salt trucks and coal trucks that cities up north have. But, that's not all! School was called off for the rest of the week, even after it seemed the snow had all melted. I was told that on some of the back roads it was so shady that there may still be "black ice" and so they couldn't take the risk of allowing busses to drive on them. If PA would have had that same rule, we would have had to go to school all year long, and we'd still be in middle school! Ah, the good old days! I'd love to hear about some of your snow experiences when you were a kid. Write and tell me about them.