I looked out my window this afternoon and saw the first snowfall of the year. The snow makes everything quiet and still like a blanket covering the frozen ground.
It reminded me of when I was a child looking out the window of our 76’ Chevy Suburban.
The streets had been covered with snow in just matter of minutes. In a few hours the snow got so bad that all the cars were covered in snow. My dad had winterized his truck so he stopped on the way home to help people out of ditches. What was supposed to be a fifteen minute ride back from my kindergarten was starting to be an all day event.
My dad never asked these people for money. He knew what it was like to be stuck in a ditch. There was no roadside service in 1979 and no one had a cell phone. A few people had radios in their car but that was it. When two feet of snow dumps on your car leaving you stranded in a ditch in the cold then you are at the mercy of a few good souls.
I shivered even though we had the heater on in the car. Even at the age of five I knew gas prices were expensive and we really didn’t know any of these people my dad was helping. Some of them were teenagers that couldn’t handle their car in the snow. One went on talking about black ice. (I didn't know ice had colors.) Others were businessmen coming home from work. My dad talked to them all like they were his best friend.
I was feeling a pain of hunger waiting in the backseat of the car and watching my dad work a sweat getting people out of their troubles. It was starting to get dark as it gets dark early on Winter nights in January. My dad then looked and me and smiled,
“We had better be headed home.”
Photo from automobile-spec.com
I don’t remember what happened next. He must have carried me from the parking lot to my bed in our tiny one bedroom apartment. We lived on the first floor so at least he didn’t have to walk up any stairs. I know my mom must have kissed me and maybe had given me some hot chocolate even though I don’t remember what happened I know her heart.
The history books say that only 2 inches of snow was expected that day but 29 inches fell. That’s more than the two feet of snow I had estimated. Anyway, the next day it snowed another two feet and it was just gonna pile up ‘til March.
Five year old boys sometimes move around in their beds at night but I think I must have slept pretty well after a long day. I woke up super hungry and my mom made pancakes and more hot chocolate. She was pretty quiet those days but very happy. Even though my dad and my older brother were outside playing she preferred to stay inside and rest. Right outside the kitchen was a French door leading out to the patio.
My older brother and my dad were already outside on the patio. They woke up before me and had finished breakfast already and now were playing in the snow on the patio. This was a little place in front of the apartment that opened up to the outside. We kept our barbeque grill there and in the summer my brother and I would sometimes find ants and rolly pollys under the rocks. Now this patio was completely covered with snow.
I opened the French doors from the kitchen and walked into an ice palace like Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. My dad had built a real igloo that we could all stand up in. Being there was the same feeling as being under a parachute but even better because it was natural. We were like people living in the ice age.
It was so warm inside the igloo compared to playing outside in the yard. All the wind was blocked and the heat of the building was trapped in our little ice fortress. We could play there for hours and hours.
The next day everything was canceled. My dad didn’t have to go to work. My brother didn’t have to go to school and I didn’t have to go to kindergarten. Across the hall we had neighbors who had just moved to America from India. They also had two sons so we often played together.
We invited these two to play together. At the time I really didn’t know the difference between India and Indiana. These boys said they had never seen snow before in their lives and now they were in our igloo covered with snow.
Here we kept our Star Wars action figures and placed them in the snow on shelves. We all saw “A New Hope” at the movie theater and remembered some parts. I think I was asleep for most of that movie. But my brother remembered more than I could. He said,
“You can have Princess Leah and C3PO. I get Luke and R2D2!”
The neighbor kids ended up with Darth Vader and Han Solo. These were Christmas presents we got from my Uncle. Now they were being put to good use being transported to the ice age. I guess George Lucas was playing the same game with his kids that day because that very next year the Empire Strikes back came out with a snow scene and Han Solo gets frozen. We had done that scene one year before the movie even came out to the theater.
This snow fort on our patio stayed up for weeks and months. Each day we would play out there and when new snow came down we would fix up the igloo a little bit. My dad also shoveled a tunnel from the igloo to get to the outside. Sometimes we would go out the tunnel and other times we would slide through the tunnel. Out of curiosity and sometimes out of dehydration we would sometimes eat the snow inside the igloo.
After some days we followed the tunnel to the other side. We were in the outside world for the first time in several days. We found some fresh snow and we found some wet snow. The snow in one spot kind of looked like a slush puppy that they served at 7-11 except instead of being cherry red it was lemonade yellow.
I told my brother to check out the cool snow. My brother said,
“Stop!”
“Always remember…"
"Watch out were the huskies go and don’t you eat that yellow snow!”
The neighbor kid told me,
“The snow outside is not as clean as you think.”
When we all realized what was going on we naturally began a Star Wars light saber game by relieving ourselves making an X on the yellow snow and watching it melt down. Soon spring would come and melt away most of my memories of that winter.
Five months later my little brother was born and I was sent to my Uncle’s house. My dad told me I should watch fireworks for a couple days. When he came back I had a little brother born on Independence Day.
My dad had a lot of albums lying around the house and this was one of them. It was written in 1974 but became popular again five years later in the great snow storm:
Dreamed I was an eskimo
Frozen wind began to blow
Under my boots and around my toes
The frost that bit the ground below
It was a hundred degrees below zero...
And my mama cried
And my mama cried
Nanook, a-no-no
Nanook, a-no-no
Don't be a naughty eskimo
Save your money, don't go to the show
Well I turned around and I said oh, oh oh
Well I turned around and I said oh, oh oh
Well I turned around and I said ho, ho
And the northern lights commenced to glow
And she said, with a tear in her eye
Watch out where the huskies go,
And don't you eat that yellow snow
Watch out where the huskies go,
And don't you eat that yellow snow
All pictures used in this article are my own and are actually taken in Korea except the picture of the Chevy Suburban, the Youtube thumbnail and my friend's picture. I'm sorry I don't have any pictures from Chicago. I'm sorry I don't have any pictures from that winter. However there is one picture from a friend I know in the suburbs.
Is it true that only children and dogs love the snow?
