by Curt Kovener
Back in the middle of the last century when I was young, I would talk to those whom I thought were my very elders who would tell me about their holidays in the early part of the last century.
For those who didn’t pay attention in Charles A. Bard’s class at CHS or are mathematically challenged that time period would be the early 1900’s.
My grandparents and their chronological peers who were young children at the turn of the last century recalled the winters of their youth.
Many regaled stories of sledding and ice skating and making snow angels and the obligatory stories of walking to school in knee deep snow…up hill…both ways. And I recall their stories of snow falling before Thanksgiving and staying until early March. Looking out my window perhaps we should cue Yogi Berra’s “Déjà vu all over again.”
Up until a few years ago, the cold, snowy weather didn’t visit southern Indiana until after Christmas, if at all. In fact a White Christmas was the exception rather than the rule. (Granted there was that very White Christmas of 30+ inches of snow a few years back that may have made up for the previous bare ground brown Christmases.)
Have weather cycles recycled back around? Maybe.
But it is head scratching and shoulder shrugging difficult to explain how, the first weekend of December, Southern Indiana shuts down due to snow and Northern Indiana around Lake Michigan was dry and clear.
I like snow if only it would fall just in the yard and the woods to cover the dull brown blah and not on the roadways and sidewalks. But not getting that wish may explain why I have never won the lottery.
In my mid century youth I remember grandparents and my Mom making snow ice cream. The recipes are varied but pretty simple: 2 cups of milk, a teaspoon of vanilla extract, a cup of granulated sugar. Mix all of that up then start stirring in fresh (let me emphasize FRESH) snow until it freezes to a consistency you like. And serve it at once as it doesn’t refreeze worth a durn.
It has been a number of years since I have had snow ice cream owing primarily to having dogs like Charley the goofy Labrador retriever who indiscriminately uses the bathroom wherever it suits him.
I am reminded of the 1970’s t-shirt of the featuring the Peanuts character Snoopy admonishing “Don’t eat yellow snow.”
