Reader Advisory.  Iron Butterfly’s“In-A-Gada-Da-Vida,” and Simon and Garfunkel are referenced in this piece. If an earworm ensues, counteract it by singing “Bingo” (you know, “there was a boy who had a little dog and Bingo was his name-o…”)

Snow days

During grade school snow days, Chicky Ross, Danny Corsi, Tommy DiPetro and I used to sled until we were frozen stiff.  We didn’t know our clothes were soaked and frozen until we got next to the coal furnace in the basement, started steaming, our pants came off as a slab of ice and our legs were maraschino red.  We flashed down Beech Street’s steep quarter mile hill.  For an easy stop, we’d make a  sharp left at the bottom slow gliding to a stop on Maple Street, or make a sharp right onto Elm for one last lazy dip.  OR, for the sledding Samurai, we’d fly straight off the bottom of Beech ten feet into the air, then Slam! onto Ray Lakavich’s yard and plunge to a brush bordered creek. The Lakavich option’s mystique was enhanced by the likelihood of pursuit by irate Ray who didn’t want “goddamn kids diggin’ up” his “fucking yard.” Today’s salacious film scripts are drafted on the lawns of America.

High school snow days were spent lounging around the electric heater in Bill Menda’s attic reading Agatha Christie and listening to “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” (baby) or Eric Burden and the Animals wail “We gotta get out of this place.” (NYT, Jan 29, 2024, “Today’s Teenagers: Anxious About Their Futures and Disillusioned by Politicians”. Really.) Or, if I was yearning from a surfeit of Simon and Garfunkel, I took long walks through snowy woods with my dog, Ginger, dreaming (me, not Ginger) of Henry Mancini’s second cousin (see my reply to Jim’s comment on my DMV post) and planning to be the next JD Salinger.

Okay I’m gonna pull up, now, before I (as a friend warns) “drive into a ditch on Memory Lane,” because, the real point of this essay is now, as a retired Boomer, to my delight, every day is a snow day.

These days, when people ask me what I have scheduled, I reply, “nothing,” that magic word, which makes time not only relative, but optional.

Look, daffodils blooming.  A perfect snow day.