It’s Tuesday afternoon and snow is falling. The big fluffy flakes are beautiful as they fall softly to the ground and pile up on tree branches. I don’t have to go anywhere. Life is good.

It feels like everywhere else people are freaking out about the three day snow event being forecast. News stations are blasting warnings. Complaints are all over social media and in any store you walk into. My husband and I were in Monticello yesterday and everywhere we went it was a mad house – people stocking up before the big storm.

Personally, I like a good snowstorm, it reminds me of my childhood in the 70s. I grew up in Wendell, a small rural town in West Central Minnesota (at the time population 240). Waking up early to the TV informing us school was going to be late or closed was every kid’s joy. 

Wendell is on the edge of the prairie. With nothing to protect the town from snowstorms coming from the west, snow would blow into enormous drifts. One winter there was so much snow the drift in front of our house was up to the second story. We kids thought it was great, my mom not so much. That year the snow didn’t disappear until late spring.

It was common to have blizzards lasting for days. Being rural, the schools had snow days built into the calendar. Even so, we’d usually use them up, so in order to avoid having to extend the school year every effort was made to get us to class. At that time, as long as the bus made it to the school it counted, so there were a number of times where our bus would just turn around and bring us back home without dropping us off, white-out conditions in both directions. 

The worst snowstorm I remember lasted for three days without letting up. By the time it was over the snow drifts were so large and hard packed from the wind it took another three days for the snowplows to get the roads cleared. My parents drove us around town on snowmobiles.

No one panicked about snowstorms. It was a fact of life. I don’t know why it seems different today. We live in Minnesota. It’s winter. It’s going to snow. Be careful and be smart.

The ice is another matter. Like everyone else, our property is a skating rink right now. And there’s no salt to be found…