Beautiful Snowy Morning

 We have another lovely coating of new snow, three inches to be exact, and it is beautiful. The sun has peeked through the clouds (and occasional snow showers) occasionally, and that is pretty exciting. We haven't seen a lot of sunshine lately. At least last night's snow is light and fluffy since the temperatures were in the low 20s. It was fun whisking it off the deck this morning - not like the back-breaking snow load we got over the weekend.

A friend reminded me recently of woolen snowsuits kids wore years ago. I think I've written here about that before, but the memory of those heavy and bulky (but very warm) garments is still vivid in my mind - especially the smell of wet wool. I suppose what I remember was made even more pungent because it was paired with wood smoke and various other scents - usually breakfast bacon or cow manure, and everything in between. We had it all. Mingled with the school smells of chalk dust and whatever cleaning solution the Maynard family used when they cleaned the school - usually something with cedar oil, I think - our school had it's own distinctive, familiar odor.

I remember struggling into those heavy snowsuits, pants with a bib and straps over the shoulders and a heavy, matching jacket - and sometimes we were allowed to keep the pants part on during classes. (The photo is me - it was spring, but I apparently hadn't shed my heavy snowsuit yet.) It was often cold in the school room. But most often we had to shed them while inside. Getting into them was hard enough, but taking them off meant that our long cotton stockings (often pulled over long-john underwear we called union suits) got skewed, and THAT required a lot of adjustments. I always had problems with garters - I had a harness-like arrangement that had straps over my shoulders and loosely around my waist and hanging elastic garters attached to the front and outer side of the stockings, and sometimes the elastic would break or the clips holding the stockings would malfunction and it was most embarrassing. Some of the girls wore their long stockings only to above their knees and secured them with jar rubbers - the kind used with Ball brand glass canning jars. My mother disapproved of those, saying they cut off circulation. 

I just realized - if I were writing this for our history book, the above paragraph would have footnotes describing what long-johns, union suits, and garters were. I trust most of you who are reading this will know these terms, but if you don't, I bet you'll find definitions on Google. Whatever the descriptions there, they won't compare to having experienced these articles of clothing first hand. I remember well how heavy that snowsuit got if the snow was wet like it was here over the weekend. Even wet, that heavy wool seemed to keep us relatively warm, but it made walking difficult, especially if it stiffened up and froze - that's why we carefully dried everything as best we could when we came inside, and the smell of wet woolen pants, socks, mittens and toques prevailed from November through March in all of the one-room schoolhouses - back in the day.

Above, the drifts around our house often obscured the view from the windows, and it was like living in an well-heated igloo. The field behind our house, looking at the school - a sea of wind-driven snow drifts.

This is our driveway after a night of wind. This was taken in 1959. In the 1930s we planted a windbreak of spruce trees in back of the house that helped against the winds coming across the flat. My parents decided in about 1961 that they'd had enough of the wind  and rough weather on the Plain. They build the house where I live now, in the protection of the hillside, less than a mile away.  They still had snow, but there is a big  difference in snow amount and wind velocity. For sure, winters were harder in the 40s and 50s, but there was a certain beauty about all of it - even the blizzards, and a definite excitement hearing the wind tear at the house and watching the snow rearrange the contours of our yard and obliterate the view of the hills, mountains and neighbors' farms across the field. Even after I'd moved away and was working in St. Johnsbury, I would often visit my parents for the weekend, hoping there would be a storm and I'd be snowbound for an extra day or two. I missed the excitement of real weather.