Karen’s Corner

By Karen Barkstrom

It snowed last week (and this week)! But you probably already knew that.

Since I grew up in the Midwest, winter snow is not a rarity to me; but since I’ve been out here in the Pacific Northwest for more than 50 years, I’ll have to admit I get pretty darned excited when those white fluffy flakes start falling from the sky. There’s just something special about snow.

I have great memories of snowy winters back in Niles, Illinois. I’m guessing I have such wonderful memories of the snow because I only experienced those long, cold winter months as a child. I never had to deal with all the stuff my parents did — like shoveling off the driveway so we could get the car out of the garage, or shoveling again after the snowplow had come along and pushed up a huge pile of snow at the end of our freshly shoveled driveway; or making sure the snow didn’t pile up too deep on the roof; or how to keep the pipes from freezing when the power went out and we had no heat for days on end; or how to get to work when the roads were bad and your boss wasn’t too sympathetic if you decided to stay home and be safe.

Oh, no, we kids had none of those worries. We just knew it was winter and there was lots of snow. We’d play a game (I think it was called fox and chickens) where we’d stamp out a big circle in the snow with a path across the middle and a path from top to bottom. One of us was the fox, the rest were chickens — like a game of tag, only in the snow, so falling down was great fun. We had sledding to do down by the Des Plaines River, snow forts to build, snowball fights and ice skating. They would flood the tennis courts at the local grade school so we could skate before and after school, as well as at lunch time. All the girls had figure skates and the boys had hockey skates. And when it got really cold, we’d skate on the Des Plaines River — which was pretty safe most of the time, except for that one little section near Tam O’Shanter Golf Course that never froze over.

In later years, my mother would love to tell the story about how aggravated she would get with me and my brother. Neither one of us was easy to wake up for school in the morning. Both Keith and I loved to sleep in, and it was a struggle every morning to get us moving. (And to make matters worse, she and Dad had to leave for work before we left for school, so they’d have to make sure we were up and functioning before they left.)

But on the mornings when they actually did cancel school, she’d come into our rooms and let us know they were leaving for work and we could sleep in.

“No school today?”

We would bound out of bed, get dressed as quickly as possible and head outside. There was exciting stuff to do like helping to push cars that were having trouble getting out of their driveways, or running and sliding on our feet before the neighbors had time to shovel the sidewalks.

Now, half a century later, I still get excited when when we get a good snowstorm. There’s something special about trying to catch snowflakes in my mouth or being the first to walk across a yard that doesn’t have any footprints in it, or that special silence that fills the air when everything is covered with snow.

If it were up to me, at least every other year we’d get enough snow to close the schools for at least two days. Every kid should be able to experience playing in the snow.

Karen Barkstrom, The Daily World’s editorial assistant, can be reached at 360-537-3925 or kbarkstrom@thedailyworld.com.