Remembrance of Snowfalls Past

My house is located near the southwestern shore of Lake Ontario. Twenty five miles or so south, and separated by the Niagara Escarpment, is Lake Erie. 

We are situated in such a place that, at least in the five years we have lived here, the winters have been cold, but did not bring with them a lot of snow.

Today’s snowfall will amount to a few inches and then be gone by the middle of the week. It is the way of things around here. 
We are too close to the narrow part of Lake Ontario and too far from Lake Erie to feel the effects of what is now called Lake Effect snow. 

I spent my childhood in a town called Fort Erie which was right across the Niagara River from Buffalo New York. It was a small town but like its bigger neighbor, was at the end of the long corridor of Lake Erie. So back then it was not uncommon for snowfall to be measured in feet instead of Inches.

When you are young and strong in a place like that, the first snow of winter was something you looked forward to because it meant a whole new kind of environment to play in, after shovelling yourself out of your house of course.

Once the snowplows got through there would be gigantic mountains of snow, so about 10 feet high, that you could climb and roll down. And there were great woods for war games. We had wooden guns carved out and assembled by Larry Jackson’s father who was some kind of sniper in World War Two. He had made an assortment of guns, even told us the kind of sounds they would make when you fired them. The submachine guns were the favourites not just because they looked the coolest but offered the best self-made sound effects opportunities.

With our wooden weapons we would charge off into an area of Oakes’ Park known as the Sugar Bowl, which also had the best toboggan hill. From there we would head off into the adjacent woods, divide up into teams of three or four, depending on how many kids showed up, and play a game of hide and seek in the woods, trudging through at least a couple feet of snow all the way.

After a couple of hours of that we would be soaked and tired and would all go back to Larry’s house where his mom would make us all hot chocolate. We would sit on the family room carpet in our long johns while out snowsuits hung out on the line and relive the war we just came back from.

I kind of feel story for kids these days, because their idea of fun seldom comes close to that. I’m hoping my grandkids get out into the snow, if we do get a big one, and create some kind of make believe battles to fight for themselves.

You might think that by today’s standards hunting each other with replicas of real guns was something you might never let your kids do. But back then, we were all able to separate reality from fantasy. Nobody turned into a sociopath. Nobody even turned into an overly aggressive person. Because the fantasy was just far enough removed from reality to lessen that risk to a great degree.