Down the Lane: Remember snow storms

Published 10:25 am Thursday, January 16, 2020

If you live in the Winchester area no one needs to tell you how unusual the weather has been this winter. If anyone would have told me there would not have been any major snowfall by going into the third week of January I would not have believed it.

In fact, as I watched the squirrels working so hard to gather food and taking into their nests this fall I thought we were in for a bad winter. So far that has not been the case.

If it does snow by Jan. 18, my daughter Shanda’s birthday, I will really be shocked. From the day she was born, every year around Jan. 17 or 18 there has been a huge snow on the ground.

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There are certain times of the year you just know certain types of weather will happen and snow on the Jan. 18 is one I hold to be a fact.

There seems to be another big snow around March 8 or 9. I wonder what this year will hold on these days.

After having another warm Christmas Day, I knew for certain I do not like warm Christmases. I want it to be cold outside at Christmas time. I also want to see snow on the ground.

I love to see the first snow of the winter. There is something so pure about that first snow. That first snow can also conjure up so many memories for me.

I can not help but think of my growing up years with my three brothers and my sister. The snowball fights, the making of a sled with a piece of an old tin or a big cardboard box. Hey, it worked for us and I guarantee we had as much fun as a Western Flyer sled from the Western Auto store.

I recall ice skating on the old pond next to our house. Of course the skating was done with overshoes, as my daddy always called our boots. We never owned ice skates but we had a blast when we were allowed on the pond to skate. We were never allowed without Mommy or Daddy with us.

Another special memory is the drinking of sassafras tea in the winter. I do not know why it was only in the dead of winter or on a snowy day that my brothers dug for sassafras roots that we made into hot sassafras tea. Maybe it is only supposed to be dug in winter; but it is a definite snow day memory. I can never watch an episode of “I Love Lucy” that I do not think of our snow days and being out of school due to snow.

I remember that my daddy, who worked in Mount Sterling, was unable to come down the lane where we lived because the snow drifts were up to the fence tops. This was for several days at a time. Then water could freeze in the room where I slept in the winter.

One knows how absolutely fearful it is when you are sliding on icy roads and not knowing if you would slide into another car or not. I remember coming back from my aunt’s home in Bourbon County and sliding back to Clark County that night. It had snowed and the roads had frozen after we had gone to her house. It was a night I will never forget.

One night, my mother built a fire in our old coal stove that became too hot. The stove was solid red from top to bottom. Her fear scared us to death. She had us all praying the house would not catch on fire and burn up. God heard our prayers that night, and she never again built a fire that large again.

Though winter was hard, I miss those days so much.

A person named Vesta Kelly said “Snowflakes are one of nature’s most fragile things, but just look what they can do when they stick together.”

I have learned they can bring happiness, beauty or fear, but for me they bring memories.

Sue Staton is a Clark County native who grew up in the Kiddville area. She is a wife, mother and grandmother who is active in her church, First United Methodist Church, and her homemakers group, Towne and Country Homemakers.