The Snowstorm
Most people today just do not understand the lifestyle of growing up in the era of living with ones means. My parents were lower middle class but more significantly, the expectations were different.
For example, we always had plenty of good food but soda was a treat. My mom used to grocery shop every two weeks and occasionally, she would buy a 6 pack of bottles of RC cola (my dad’s favorite). When a bottle was opened, it was shared by several of us. If there were families in my sphere of knowledge that operated differently, I certainly did not know about it.
Another example was shoes. My mom would take my sister and me to Luer’s shoe store (no longer in existence), to buy a pair of dress shoes, a pair of sneakers, a pair of sandals and (significant to this story) a pair of snow boots at various times in the year. As kids, my mom wanted to wait for summer time, for example, before buying the sandals to make sure we got full use of them for the season.
This one year (I was maybe 8), mom waited a little too long to buy snow boots and decided to take us as a snow storm hit. We lived two and a half miles from the highway on a rural road (and a little further than that from city streets). We made it to Luer’s fine.
As a side note, Luer’s was a two-level store with little kids’ shoes on the upper level and what they referred to as the teen room in the lower level. The cool part was that the lower level was mod and groovy (late 60s/early 70s) and they had a soda fountain for customers. When you combine this with my mom’s judicious distribution of RC cola, you might guess what a treat it was to get new shoes.
Anyway, we were heading home at about the same time my dad was after getting off work. This is Illinois, so there are lots of open fields that the wind can blow snow. Shortly after getting off the highway, we had to jump the ditch and drive through a field to get around a stuck car. We eventually made it to a neighbor’s house (maybe half mile from the highway), where we waited while the men folk pushed the stuck cars out of the way. It seems like we were there until 9pm. By this time, we were all hungry (I am not sure why Mrs. Moore did not offer us something to eat. Maybe due to having several people camping out there).
Eventually, the determination was made that the road was passable and we got on the way. About halfway between the highway and our house are two fairly steep hills. Even though the snow had been bladed, there was still a fine layer of ice. Before we could go up the hill, we had to help a car in front of us make it. I remember helping my dad push the car up the hill while he grumbled that the young woman driver should have been prepared with snow tires (this was before radial tires were available so you had to put on snow tires in the winter and regular tires when winter was over). When our turn came, my dad told my mom to get some speed up and not let up or the ice would win. We made it through the hills.
It must have been 11pm before we got home. We were all starving. I remember my mom putting out fixin’s for Dagwood sandwiches (if you’ve never heard of that reference before, a Dagwood is a lunch meat sandwich where the maker puts various meats, cheeses, vegetables and toppings to his liking with lesser regard to the height of the sandwich - see Blondie comic strip). I think we all almost went to sleep trying to finish our food. Once the hunger was satisfied, the exhaustion took over.
...“do not hastily bring into court, for what will you do in the end, when your neighbor puts you to shame? Argue your case with your neighbor himself, and do not reveal another’s secret, lest he who hears you bring shame upon you, and your ill repute have no end. A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver. Like a gold ring or an ornament of gold is a wise reprover to a listening ear. Like the cold of snow in the time of harvest is a faithful messenger to those who send him; he refreshes the soul of his masters. Like clouds and wind without rain is a man who boasts of a gift he does not give.” - Proverbs 25:8-14 ESV
There were several lessons I learned from that experience. The first was that there is a fine line between optimizing value and having the thing available (the snow boots). Second, there is general maintenance that only works if you pursue it (the snow tires). And lastly, always be willing to help someone out in a snow drift. We would have not made it home that night if all the people on that road didn’t work together to help each other out.
Post script…
At the top of those hills is a right turn. During a subsequent snow storm, my mom got her car stuck at that corner coming home from work (she worked 3-11pm) and had to walk the approximate 1 mile to get home. There were a serious of bad snow years when I was a youngster.
