AiredaleGirl is the nom de guerre of yet another native of Hooterville, aka Smalltownland, depending on whose blog you’re reading. She is currently on the faculty of a small, rural college in Kentucky. Her baby sister was Southernfriedmomma’s college roommate. She knows where the bodies are buried.
Winter Weather Advisory circa 1977
Back in the day, our tiny hometown used to get actual, real-live accumulations of snow during the winter. There were a couple of pretty bad ones back-to-back in 1977 and 1978, with upwards of three feet of snow on the ground, resulting in schools being closed for a month or better each time. We were out so long that in order to make it up, we went on Saturdays and were in school until June…in an old, un-air-conditioned building, parts of which dated to the early 1950s. Talk about some angry children, cooped up in a hot school on Saturdays in the summer!
It was during these two winters that a couple of things of note happened back home: a lot of people bought four-wheel drive vehicles (Dad’s was a 1968 Ford Bronco, in patriotic red, white, and blue), and several of my friends’ moms had actual, locked-up-in-a-psych-ward nervous breakdowns from having to stay at home that long with the kids. My mother, however, made us do creative things like hike two miles to and from the grocery towing our American Flyer sled, bring in wood for the fire, and learn to cook. I also got to be pretty good at canasta, five-card stud, and Michigan rummy…given the fact that I was a third- and fourth-grader then. Mom grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere; she knew what to do with children during bad weather with no electricity. No frivolous nervous breakdowns for her.
The second winter, our mothers banded together to figure out what to do with us, since we were pretty tired of sledding after the first week and they were sick of running our snowsuits through the dryer. What they hit on was craft lessons at a local craft shop. They took turns driving us over, and the lady who ran it, God love her heart, put up with us for several hours each day.(SFM can verify the results; she works with my father, who proudly displays the white macrame’ fish I made on the wall of his private office.) I also made a plant hanger and a handbag- I think that was about as much of us as the craft lady could take.
So, there you have it: find some poor, unsuspecting soul who will take the kiddies off your hands and occupy their time for a nominal fee before you go completely insane. In return, your children will supply you with weird handicrafts over which you will have to ooh and ahh until such time as you can safely stuff them in the back of the junk closet. Of course, there is the alternative: going barking mad and winning a fun-filled vacation at the nearest psychiatric inpatient facility of your insurer’s choice. It’s up to you, girls.
