This Nostalgic Life is a free weekly publication rich with nostalgia brought to you by co-creators Eric Vardeman and Mick Lee. If this is your first time reading, you can subscribe using the button below so you don’t miss receiving any future issues delivered straight to your inbox.
Welcome to the 34th edition of This Nostalgic Life. With the weather outside being cold and/or snowy for most of the country at the moment, we thought it would be a good time to share some snow memories. So settle in, snuggle up, and relive a couple of cold and snowy day tales with Eric and Mick.
The Snow of 1982
by Eric
We don’t get a lot of snow in Oklahoma. Aside from a couple of big ice storms over the years and the Snowpocalypse of 2011 that dumped 17” on us on Christmas Eve into Christmas Day, Oklahoma isn’t much of a winter playground. We usually get one good snow every winter, typically after the first of the year, somewhere in the 5-6” range (case in point, we got almost seven inches last week and there’s still a patch of snow on my front lawn as I write this).
Most school districts in the state build in “snow days” into their yearly calendar that don’t get fully used most years especially now that they can conduct “distance learning” days (thank you, COVID). For the uninitiated, “snow days” are days that get canceled because of snow that doesn’t have to be made up at the end of the year. When I was a kid, we lived for snow days however the only way you typically knew it was a snow day was to get up at the break of dawn on a given day that there was snow and watch the news to see if your school name was scrolling across the bottom of the screen (on the rare occasion it announced the night before but usually it was the morning of). If your school was listed the day was yours!
One day, early in 1982, the forecast called for snow. There was no snow that evening, but the weatherman said it was expected to move in overnight. So, early the next morning, I dragged myself out of bed to peek out of my bedroom window, hoping to see snow. Drats! The ground was as bare as it was the night before so off to school I went. I lived less than three blocks from my school and both my parents worked so unless there was a torrential downpour, I walked or rode my bike to and from school every day. On this particularly cold day, for whatever reason, I decided to walk to school instead of employing the faster mode of transportation. Not long after school started, the snow started. Not much at first but as the morning progressed, the snow got heavier. And heavier. I was twelve years old sixth grader at this time and all my friends and I could think about that morning were the epic snowball fights we were about to have at recess. However, right before our normal recess time, the principal’s voice crackled over the room speaker to announce that not only was outside recess canceled but that school was being dismissed at noon. He went on to give special instructions for the kids who rode the buses and instructed teachers to allow/help the kids who normally had people picking them up after school to use the room phone to call and make arrangements for early pick up (each room had a landline phone at the time). That left the rest of us latchkey kids looking around and wondering “What about us?”
We soon found out “What about us”. They just turned us loose. There wasn’t a school portal to alert parents of what was transpiring, there wasn’t a website or social media or anything. So, our parents just didn’t know that they turned us loose into the snowy weather to fend for ourselves to get home. We were twelve, though, and relished any opportunity we were afforded to play in the snow. Do you think any of us latch keys went straight home? Not on your freaking life! We played. We hit the playground and had snowball fights. There was a large city park a couple of blocks from our school, Sooner Park, that had all manner of hills and slopes, so several of us dug a piece of cardboard out of the school dumpster and went sledding. They failed to feed us lunch before school was dismissed and we were hungry, so we went to someone’s house and ate what we could find. Then it was back out into the snow we went. Nearly all afternoon.
My sister was in kindergarten at the time at the same school, and when they canceled school, my mom got a phone call about picking my sister up early. She, in turn, tried to get them to relay a message to me about picking me up at the same time, but the message never got to me. So, when they shut my dad’s office down because of the storm and he got home to find my frantic mother calling around trying to find me, he set out looking for me. It never dawned on me that my parents a) didn’t know school was out or b) had no earthly idea where I was or what I was doing. Didn’t dawn on me until, as we were walking down the middle of one of our neighborhood streets having the time of our lives, a familiar car came driving up to us. It was my dad. And, surprise of all surprises, he wasn’t at all happy with me. I got in the car, and he drove me home. In silence.
We ended up getting over seven inches of snow from that storm and were out of school for two more days. And again, surprise of all surprises, I was grounded for both of those days for the little stunt I pulled. I had to settle for playing with my sister in the snow. Looking back on it now, though, the fun we had that afternoon was totally worth it.
Saturday School
by Mick Lee
I grew up in the Appalachian mountains, so in the wintertime, we never suffered from any shortage of snow. Most days in January and February had a little snow, even if it was just flurries. But some days the sky would open and we’d get 6-12” dumped on us. Which was fine most of the time, because in this area, snow removal equipment is abundant, and rarely were you stuck at home unless you just wanted to be.
And as Eric mentioned in the earlier story, there were snow days built into the school calendar. The difference between his and my childhood though is that the snow days that were figured in here were most certainly all used up by the time the winter season was over. And you know what happened back in those “good old days” when we exceeded those snow days? We had to go to school on Saturdays to make up for lost time.
While I’m sure it sounds strange to any younger folks reading this, I’m a little surprised at just how many folks my age have been shocked when I’ve told them that we used to have to go to school on Saturdays back then to make up missed days.
And let me tell you, there was never any worse feeling for us kids than having to drag ourselves to school on a Saturday. If there was any saving grace to it whatsoever, it was the fact that it wasn’t a full day…or at least I don’t remember full days. While a normal school day ran from 8:30 to 3:30, a Saturday was 8:30 to 1:00 PM if I remember correctly. There are a lot of years between now and back then so you’ll have to pardon me if I remember that part incorrectly.
Looking back on it now, it was really a waste of the teacher’s time as no learning was ever done on a Saturday school session. We kids were too busy complaining to each other about the cartoons and/or wrestling shows we were missing that day to get anything productive done. And throw in the fact that gym class was still had and lunch got squeezed into the shortened day meant that the teachers had even less time to try to teach us anything.
As I sit here writing this, I can’t remember a single thing I learned on one of those Saturdays in school. But I can tell you about something I taught on one of those days…
In January 1987, we got such a snow storm at the first of the year, and several more snows that followed, we didn’t start back right after Christmas. It was the middle of January before we could go back. My family had just gotten our first VCR in late 1986, and when the first Saturday of school was on the schedule, I spent that morning trying to teach my Mom how to record on that VCR. I was intent on not missing my Saturday morning cartoons. I even left Mom a list of times, channels, and shows and expected her to run downstairs every half hour and flip the channel to the correct one to catch my shows. And she did a marvelous job and didn’t miss a single one love her heart.
I had that homemade VHS tape for years after that, but at some point, it got gone and I’ve never figured out what happened to it. But for the years that I had it, it was the only thing good that ever came from having to go to school on a Saturday in the winter.
Thank you for reading this issue of This Nostalgic Life. We’ll be back in your inbox again one week from today with more tales from the past. In the meantime, drop us a line in the comments with a story about a snowy day from YOUR past!
My experience is closer to Eric’s. Snow Days here are like a holiday. 😂