Springtime and Winter Memories

It sure feels like spring out there this morning. And West Shore Road is showing signs of spring, too! There are some pretty slimy spots, one especially below my house about half way between my driveway and Chatot's. The sun hits there in the morning and it can get pretty greasy as the frost comes out of the top surface layers. It's passable, but  you don't want to hit it at 35 or 40 mph or you could land in a ditch.

Another sign of spring is the number of fishing shanties out on the pond. This past week there have been more than usual, plus several vehicles. Seeing cars and trucks out there makes some of us on shore cringe, waiting for someone to go through the ice. Apparently the fishermen think it's safe, but I wouldn't want to trust it. I'm not comfortable on the ice any time, and certainly not this year. Diane took this photo last week - and yesterday when Diane, Dotty and I were heading out for a lunch date, there were all kinds and descriptions of shanties, people and vehicles out there. It was a really nice day, but not as warm as it is today - I'm showing 56.5F on my outdoor thermometer that is in the shade! Really feels like spring. I'm sure the fishermen are having a grand time.

Diane, Dotty and I went to the Peacham Cafe for lunch yesterday. There weren't many people there, but the owners were cheerful and very welcoming. It's really a pleasant atmosphere, and we enjoyed it. We had good food and refills of hot chocolate and coffee - with enormous freshly-baked cookies. So good! We wanted to take advantage of the good weather, all of us realizing we'll probably pay dearly later for this mild weather.

I was rummaging around in my picture files the other day and came across some snow pictures. Our house on the plain was nearly buried every winter. The snow drifted in front of the house, blocking all but the uppermost sections of the ground-floor windows. Some winters we gave up shoveling and either climbed over the drift, or, when it got really stormy, just dug a tunnel trough and that worked really great - there was usually just a little snow at either end to shovel. This photo is my Grandfather McAllan, making his way past our shed, probably to shovel out the big doors at the south end so the spring sun could warm up the woodshed. The ladder next to the main house was left up all winter so my father could get up onto the roof to pour salt down the chimney to put out the fairly frequent chimney fires we had.

Back then, the town plowed driveways. Nobody had a plow on the front of their pickup trucks like we have now. It was either wait for the plow to come or get out there with a shovel. My Grandfather Bolton's farm was the last place on the road, and on a hill overlooking our house and the "flat" where the school was. The big hay field that was part of the farm, stretched out behind our house like a choppy ocean after some of those big wind and snow storms. The wind usually packed the snow in pretty solidly on the road across that flat, especially after the snowbanks got fairly high, but that relatively small (by today's standards) crawler tractor managed to break through the hard-packed snow drifts - sometimes having to back up and break up drifts piece by piece, first with the wings back, using just the front plow, and then they would make another pass with the wings down to plow a wider path. It took hours to go just a few miles sometimes.This photo is the plow approaching the farm. There was a road where the present road is now - it was tree-lined and quite steep, and the plow had a hard time keeping it open because there was no place to put the snow. So the road was moved, probably in the 1940s, to come off of the seasonal road that went from below the farm to West Shore Road in a straight line, coming out where my mailbox is now. For several years the road to the farm was through an open field north of the present road, and that is the road in this picture, probably taken in the 1940s or early 1950s.

Here is another photo I had forgotten about. My first car was a Packard - a l941 I think. It was pretty reliable, a clunky four-door sedan, and I really didn't like it, but it was what my parents thought I should have. I was working for Lesnick's DeSoto-Plymouth agency at the time, and got a "deal," as I recall. I think this picture was taken in the spring of 1950 or 1951 - I had come home for the weekend and this was my car when I needed to go to work on Monday morning. The motor from this car was used as power for my father's saw mill for several years after I married and no longer the car. The motor ran great - but the body was well rusted and would have needed lots of work if it had remained on the road.

When I found this photo of me when I was little, probably taken in 1933 or 34, I was amused at the similarity to this photo (right) of my first-born son, Bill, when he was a little guy, taken when we were living on Hill Street in Danville. We had a big snow year then, too. He was born in May, 1957, and this was March, 1958, according to the date on the photo, so he wasn't quite a year old in this picture.

Enough snow pictures and reminiscing. Those were cold, snowy years, but we dealt with them. Seeing the pictures makes me appreciate this spring-like weather, though! Sap is running today, I bet!

PS - I just had this note from Shelly Walker, who has a closeup view of the ice-fishing community:

There are 17 shanties in the bay, no cars this noon, but plenty of dark wet spots on the ice that look decidedly unsafe!