WHEN I WAS A KID

WHEN I WAS A KID

I was listening to the radio the other morning and they were reading off a myriad of school closings and delays due to the weather. It reminded me that this never happened when I was going to school. In all the years I went to school, there was never a delay or off-day due to the weather. Never!

As for elementary school, everyone lived close enough to walk. There were no plows to clean the streets anyway. If it snowed, you walked through it. No one really used salt to melt the snow or ice. The only thing I remember like that, was a man down the street throwing ashes from his furnace out in the street so that cars would not slide into his yard. Street maintenance consisted of putting 'road closed' signs on horses at the top of steep hills. Those streets were then used for sled riding.

When I went to high school, I traveled by city bus (not school bus) most of the time. I walked about three blocks to catch the bus. The buses just kept on running. If it snowed, you went to the stop and waited. School was never closed. You got there when you could.

Every family had a radio (usually one per household) but we didn't flip it on in the morning to hear the school closing reports, I know that. We had a TV after a few years. You never turned it on in the morning, either. If your family had a car, there was only one so there was no way you could be driven to school.

Cars never handled very well in the snow. Almost all cars were 'front engine-rear wheel drive' models. This didn't change until about 1980. That type of car is no good in the snow. Since the streets didn't get cleaned, you had to be real careful when there was snow on the streets.

We've progressed a lot in technology in the last 60 years. As usual, I'm not sure its all for the better.