Hoping for a snow day
Even a hint of snow is enough to make my son hopeful. “Do you think we’ll have school tomorrow?” he asks, even before the first flake hits the ground.
What is it about kids and snow and school?
If we lived in southwestern Minnesota or near the Iowa border, I could understand his wishful obsession with snow days. In those parts of the state, the open landscape and strong winds invite blowing snow, white-out conditions and treacherous travel. But not here in Rice County’s more protected terrain. The chance of a snow day in Faribault-based Independent School District 656 isn’t too likely.
But still, I suppose a kid can wish for multiple snow days like those I experienced while attending junior high school in Redwood Falls during the late 1960s. One particular winter (I don’t recall exactly which), getting to school proved challenging, if we got there at all. I’ll explain.
I lived on a farm just outside of Vesta, which is 20 miles west of Redwood Falls. Weather and road conditions were so bad and the snow so deep one winter that buses did not venture into the country to pick up students. If we wanted to get to school in Redwood Falls, we had to find our own way into Vesta, where one bus departed from the local café at a designated hour. And guess how my oldest brother and I got to and from Vesta? Via our Dad’s John Deere tractor. And back in those days, tractors did not have cabs.
As if the cold tractor ride the mile into town to catch the bus wasn’t enough, once we got to Redwood Falls, the teachers were none too happy with us Vesta kids. Like we could help being tardy.
A few years later, I was attending high school in Wabasso following a school merger. We had plenty of snow days there too. As in Redwood Falls, we had “snow homes,” designated in-town houses where we would stay should snowstorms strand us. I never stayed at a snow home.
But I recall one particular bus ride home that warranted an overnight stay in town. The bus driver drove with the door open and a student watching out the door so we wouldn’t run in the ditch. That we made it safely to our destination during those blinding snow conditions was miraculous. To his credit, the bus driver stuck to the main highways, stopped only at homes along those tarred roads and dropped off the rest of the students in Vesta.
And, no, I never had to walk two miles to school one way, uphill, in three-foot-deep drifts. That would have been the generation before me.
(For more articles by Audrey Kletscher Helbling, go to the Minnesota Moments Blog )
