Snow, snow, snow, snow, snow

That's a line from "White Christmas" -- the movie -- the song is called "Snow", I think.

Anyway, I did watch White Christmas -- a favorite movie of mine at this time of year. Also, since we had SNOW yesterday -- enough to stick, make a mess of my windshield, and cause a sheet of ice to remain on my sidewalk and driveway, basically making me home-bound until I can get some salt to the ice, or until it warms up, I thought I'd remember snowy days in Runnemede.

Before I go there, yesterday I went out to Indiana, in the snow, and caught snowflakes on my tongue with my granddaughter. She didn't get the thrill out of that activity as I did. Everyone needs to catch snowflakes on their tongue, don't they?

What do I remember about snowy days? Well,

I remember this blue, pointed top hat, ugly as can be, but apparently in style in the 40s, and I remember being bundled up in snow pants, several pairs of socks, rubber boots, mittens, and a scarf. Going out in the snow, as a four or five-year-old, and that first step having my boots filled with snow. Brrr! Did I go inside? No. Dad was pulling me on the sled -- we had one that had two runners and wooden slats to sit on, with a steer bar in the front. No plastic slider for us. We had the real thing! (See the picture?)

I remember finally being told to go inside, apparently I was turning blue. I remember dumping the snow out of my rubber boots, trying to wiggle my toes, to make sure they were still attached.

Then, I remember in high school, the year was 1959, I believe. We had more snow that winter than any I could remember. We had so much snow that winter that the street in front of our house was buried for three months, including all of March. The worst storm of the year was in late March. It knocked out the electricity, and it got so cold in my bedroom that you could see your breath -- and that was with a small kerosene stove in the space. Dad, of course, was not happy, as he really loved the old coal furnace we had when I was younger -- before the church elders decided that an oil heater was a better investment for the house.

Gone were the days of warm floors -- which we had with the coal furnace. And gone was the possibility of keeping warm without electricity. A week without electricity in the winter was not fun, but we coped.

I remember my father going down into the basement, stoking the fire late at night, putting more coal in the furnace, to get us through the night, and then first thing in the morning, filling the bed of the furnace with more fresh coal to keep us warm during the day. The coal bin was in the front of the basement, under the porch, actually, and the coal delivery truck would put a chute through the window, and pour coal into the "bin" from which dad would get the coal to fill the heater.

He never complained about doing that chore, either. We had a warm basement, a warm first floor, and even the attic room I shared with my sister was warm, as were the floors. I loved the warm floors which for some reason we had with coal heat but not with oil heat. Perhaps it was because the ducts from the coal heater were so much larger than the ducts from the oil heater. The coal furnace had 12-inch ducts which fed the hot air into the various "registers" of which several were actually in the walls, not in the floor. The "register" (that's what they called the openings where the heat came from) to the attic was actually in the chimney.

My current home has "registers" in the ceiling, which in the summer is fine, because cool air sinks, but in the winter, the hot air stays up near the ceiling -- remember hot air rises? And we have high ceilings, which means it doesn't get too warm in our current home in the winter, which is okay, because we just wear sweaters or flannel shirts, etc. to keep warm. Not a problem.

Today, the day after our first snow, is sunny, and the sun porch is warm -- it's only 20 degrees outside, but the porch is up to 80. It will cool off as the sun goes down, but right now it's nice and toasty.

And I remember our back porch in Runnemede, after it was enclosed, as being that way. We played out there most of the time, and dad had a portable electric heater which he turned on at night. He set up the electric trains on the porch -- his toy? -- in early November, and they stayed up until late January. I guess that was when mom had had enough of us wanting to play with the trains even in the cold weather, and also, the platform on which dad put the trains took up about half of the porch, thus limiting our actual play space. I remember a couple of years we set up the Christmas tree out there, but most years the tree was in the dining room bay window.

I guess I've reminisced enough about snow. To my friend Stacia, should she read this, we never were able to make a snowman out of 2 inches of snow, but we did make snowmen in the back yard, and used the coal from the bin for the eyes and mouth. Mom provided a carrot for the nose, and a scarf for the neck. I sort of remember using that pointed hat for the head of our snowmen. What I don't remember is that our snowmen ever looked really good, more like a Charley Brown snowman -- large bottom, no middle, and small head, low enough for a five or six-year-old to reach.