My first 'adult' experience of a snow storm.

This is not about x-rated stuff. Until 1956 or 1957, snowstorms in the hills of Worcester, MA were just plain fun. What else could it be? We sledded, skated, tobogganed, sleigh rode. Our parents joined in, the whole neighborhood joined in. Our family even went skiing up in Vermont.

We froze, we had a house full of radiators with drying steamy wool mittens drying on them. Our gear, by today's standards was total crap. Layers of stuff, mostly not waterproof, bound our actions. We traded and mixed and matched. I remember wearing my fathers huge galoshes stuffed with newspaper when my boots ripped. I had one piece long underwear and had to strip everything off to use the unheated out houses on the ski mountains. My mother embarrassed us all by wearing a foot ball helmet ice skating. She had fallen and gotten a concussion a year previously. It was all good fun. We built bonfires on the pond. We sledded under moving cars until the adults would finally close off the street for sledding.

Then, when I was in sixth grade, my girlfriends and I decided to have a Valentines Day party. We wanted to do it all ourselves. We were in over our heads, but having a blast. It took many of us to produce a heart shaped cake with neon pink frosting. We made little sandwiches and cut off the crust and made them into hearts. We made pink cool aid. We made decorations. We walked to the store again and again...more sprinkles, more crepe paper, more candy.

This was the fifties and we were trying for June Cleaver status. Our parents let us alone. Then, at noon the day before Valentines, we were sent home from school because a blizzard was coming in. By night, the phones were down, the electricity was off and we were each in our own houses with a piece of the party. Our parents wouldn't let us go out to each others homes. You couldn't see two feet ahead.

The storm continued for days. eventually we each, separately, made the decision to eat whatever our piece of the party was. My family had a hundred little sandwiches. I wished we would have had the cake at our house. We experienced a let down that our adults couldn't make better. For years after I would never plan anything important on Valentines Day. My myth became "If there is going to be a blizzard, it will come on February 14."