More Snow Stories and Pics

Yes, it was a big snow. Most of the kids in the neighborhood went up to the Etz hill to sledride. It was fun dodging the trees.
The kid down the street had a St. Bernard which we tied our sleds to and let the dog pull us up the hill at the end of the street. Steering a sled was an art form. Another favorite site for sledding was the "hill" across from St. John's chapel on Heiskell. I can remember seeing a daredevil of a kid go between the wheels of a car as it sped down the street...a miracle he survived...you just can't cure stupid so I doubt if he is still alive.
I often wondered what flatlanders did for fun when it snowed.
If the outdoors got too cold, we always had our basement. The floor was concrete so it was perfect for rollerskating. We also had an archery range at one time, put on plays, had a schoolroom with authentic desks with inkwells and a huge blackboard. My brother Colin had his imaginary restaurant in the basement ...motto?...Eat Out at Ooter's Inn.
Best of all was the fireplace that my dad built out of huge stones all containing fossils. In the middle of the fire an iron statue of a pioneer woman hung by the neck...don't ask me why. My father built a chair out of a barrel. The seat had a trap door and in the bottom half of the barrel was stashed all our Halloween candy...nine kids, A LOT OF CANDY!...enough to last most of the winter. Our favorite thing to do was turn out all the other lights in the basement and sit around the fireplace while my dad told or read a story. One of the classic favorites was called "Shingabis" . If I remember right, it was an Indian story about a penguin.
The plays were elaborate as well. One written by a my sister Louise was called "Seven Days on the Frontier" and involved a frontier family. I got to play a bear. Our wardrobe was extensive. The bear wore an old full-length fur coat backwards and growled and raged at the window outside the cabin. My dad would sit in the back row and bonk kids in the audience on the head with a long clothesline pole with a tennis ball on the end of it, if they played up.
Basements were a necessary part of life. Dr. Maury built a boat in his, but couldn't get it out. The Leibolds' basement was a teenage hangout where we would listen to Bo Diddly and Jerry Lee Lewis. Almost everyone had a usable basement...great place to send noisy kids to play when the weather was too bad to go outside.