with their church sign. Even their welcome line is covered with snow and I have a hunch they are saying, "Enough, Enough!" Around this corner of Michigan we are ready for some mid-thirty temps
to warm things up. The TV stations are saying it's the worst winter in decades and maybe it is.
But I'm far enough along in years to remember some winter storms that were challenging in their own right. In my later elementary school years I attended a two room school - one with 1st through 4th grades, the other with 5th through 8th grade (the room I was in for four years where we moved back a row each time we were promoted, and out the door when we finished the 8th grade.) I walked to school a mile each way no matter what the weather. I made it to school and back every day except when we were snowbound and even the big Oshkosh tank-tread snow plow didn't make it up our hill.
The only way we made it outside our house was on snowshoes and like I said, it was a mile to town.
There was another time when I was in the National Guard in Massachusetts that we had a crippling January ice and snow storm that turned out to be designated a disaster and I was on guard duty at a ice-threatened river bridge and we had icy snow and heavy snow with terrible wind. The Salvation Army came around every half hour or so with warm gloves and coffee.
In more recent years I was assigned to a four-church parish in northwest Indiana. It seems unbelievable that we had major snowstorms at the end of every week that meant cancelling services four successive weeks in a row - even the church next to the parsonage and it was alongside a major highway. Church members couldn't make it in from the farm roads, and I couldn't get to their homes and even to town for some time. When the weather finally let up we headed out for one of our more remote churches and the snow piles along the road were half again or twice as high as the car. To top that off, The roads were plowed only in one lane - fortunately we didn't meet anyone coming toward us - one or the other would have had to back up to a driveway - and there were precious few of them that were plowed.
During the mid-1980's we were serving at a mid-Indiana church and scheduled a vacation in January.
It was a great time to go but a day or two after we got back we were assaulted by another major snow storm. Joyce was working in an office in a city an hour away and the weather got worse and worse. So bad, in fact, that it was a week before she got back to work and the driving even then was hazardous. Fact is, it was several days before we could even get into our town.
So, I guess our storms through December and thus far in January I can say to those around us,
"been there - contended with that before." Those who have to make their way to work have my sympathy. I am glad to be retired, especially when we have snow up to our windows and the thermometer is hovering around the zero mark.
But I still say, to the weather powers that be: "Enough is Enough!" And if I were still serving a church I wonder what I would put on a signboard in times like this? It's a bit dated, but how about "Snow, Snow, Go away.........Come again another Day.....like 2025."
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