Today's blog is on a personal note. I live in northeastern Pennsylvania and I have a question. WHERE IS OUR SNOW? We've had a few dustings (less than an inch) over the last 3 weeks and my girls have had 2 snow delays. Languishing in the school schedule are 11, count them 11 unused snow days.

I long for the days when we would get a good old fashioned snow storm in my home town of Cold Spring, New York. We lived on Market Street in a 3 story apartment building. We would get ready for school in the morning and my mom would make sure I had my mittens and ski mask (the kind with eye and mouth holes only). Off I would trudge up the Main Street Hill up to Haldane school. It was freezing cold or so it seemed to me at the time and I would be layered with a jumper and blouse (these were the days when girls did not wear pants), tights, leggings over the tights and a warm wool coat. Add to that my mittens and ski mask and I was ready to do battle with Mother Nature.

Occasionally there would be a bully (David Vitanza comes to mind) who would dump me into a snow bank and then my knight in shining armor, Russell Kane, pulled me out and helped me get brushed off. Later that night as I related the story my dad taught me how to make a very hard fist and told me to punch David if he tried it again (those were the days when you could get away with teaching your kids to take care of themselves). The next day David was at it again and this time he got a hard fist in the belly. Strangely enough after that he never bothered me again.

Almost as soon as we would get all those layers of winter clothes off at school, our teacher would be sending us home to trudge back down Main Street. I'm supposing the reason for this was that if we did not come into school the school did not get their federal money for the day.

The walk home always took at least 45 minutes longer. On the way home we had time for making snow forts, snowball fights and some people with pocket money to spare would stop at Dazzell's five and dime store for a candy bar. Still others would opt for Palen's Rexall Drug store where they would mosey up to the soda fountain and get some Breyer's ice cream.

Once those important duties were taken care of we would continue on our way down Main Street and go into the "subway" (an underground walkway that went under the Penn Central railroad tracks) at the end of Main Street. After that we would walk up the two flights of stairs to our home on the third floor and strip off the now soaked snow clothing. We'd sit down and have hot chocolate and then play for the rest of the day. I remember my mom hanging laundry on the line out of the third story window with wet clean diapers thrown over her shoulder as she hung them out one by one (might that be what started the bursitis in her shoulder).

We moved away from Cold Spring when I was 10 years old but I'll always remember Cold Spring, New York, a wonderful place to be a kid in the mid 1960s.