A Winter's (Tall) Tale

On a cold, blustery March afternoon, I was babysitting my six-year old grandson who was staring out the front window with a bored look on his face.

“Let’s go for a walk,” I suggested.

“No, Grampa.  It’s too cold!  I really wish winter was over.”  He flopped down on the sofa and stared up at the ceiling.

“Winter is over, young man.  Yesterday was the first day of spring,” I observed.

“Well, it still feels like winter, Grampa.  And it’s lasting too long.  When’s it going to get warm?  I want to go swimming.”

“See here, grandson.  This is just a typical March day.  And this year’s winter was hardly fit to be called a winter.  Let me tell you boy, when I was young, we had some real winters – not like the wimpy ones we’ve had since you were born.”

“Tell me about them, Grampa.”

“Well, let me think for a minute.  Oh yeah.  I remember the winter of 1972.  Now that was a real doozy – a winter to beat all winters.”

“What was it like?”

“Well, if I remember correctly, the snow started falling around Thanksgiving and it didn’t let up until Easter Sunday.  I was in college at the time.  It snowed so much that it piled up past the third floor window of my dormitory.”

“Wow!”

“Yes sir, young man.  With that much snow you’d think they would have cancelled classes, but they didn’t.  So we made tunnels through the snow, and they connected all the buildings on campus.  Then we’d strap on skis and go whooshing through those tunnels to wherever we needed to go.”

“Really?!”

“You better believe it.  In college you’ve got to pay for classes, so we didn’t want to miss any.  In fact, we built a second layer of tunnels on top of the first in order to get to classes that were on the second floor.  Those tunnels were reserved for sleds and toboggans.  If you had a class on the third floor, you had to put on snow shoes so you could walk on top of that huge accumulation of white stuff.”

“Was it cold like it is today?” my grandson asked looking back out the window.

“Hrumph.  My boy, you can’t be serious.  As cold as it is today, it can’t come close to how cold it was back then.  I’ll tell you, the temperature never got above zero that whole winter.  It was so cold that when you talked to anyone outside, the steam coming out of your mouth would freeze into a bubble, and the words you were speaking would be captured inside it.  You’d actually have to read what the person was saying to you, just like you were reading a comic book.”

The young boy turned to face me.  “I don’t believe you.”

“It’s true,” I said looking right at him.  “And one day it was so cold that the air froze completely solid.  When you opened the door and tried to step outside, you walked into a frozen wall of air and couldn’t get beyond the front door.”

“I think you’re kidding me now,” he looked a tad unsure.

“No, seriously,” I countered.  “And anyone that got caught outside when it happened was unable to move.”  I stood up, took a step and froze to demonstrate.  “I suppose those folks were just held motionless, like fish when a pond freezes solid.  I also remember distinctly that it happened at night, and the moon got stuck where it was in the heavens until it warmed up enough for the air to thaw.”

“So what did everyone do?”

“Well, when it happened they actually had to cancel classes because no one could get out of the buildings where they were living.  And having no classes gave us the perfect excuse to have a huge party.”

“With cake and ice cream?”

“That would have been an excellent idea, but it was so unexpected that we didn’t have a chance to plan it out and get to the store for party supplies.  We went around the dorm to see what everyone was willing to contribute to the party and came up with a bunch of those big, two-liter bottles of soda.  We had ginger ale, orange and cherry soda and root beer.  Unfortunately, the bottles had all been opened, so they’d all gone flat.  Besides that, they were warm because we weren’t allowed to have refrigerators in our rooms back then.”

“That doesn’t sound like a very fun party, Grampa.” 

You’re right about that.  Yes, it was going to be a pretty sad excuse for a party with nothing to drink but warm, flat soda.  But luckily, one of the guys down the hall happened to have a tool box.  He had the bright idea of using a hammer and chisel to break off a few chunks of the frozen air outside to cool our drinks.  I’ll tell you, those drinks turned out to be colder than you can imagine.  And when those air cubes melted, they put the fizz right back in that flat soda!  Yes sir, it turned out to be a great party until the air unfroze and we all had to go back to class.”

“Did it get warm?

”

“Eventually, it warmed up and all the snow melted.  And you know what happens when snow melts?”

“What, Grampa?”

“Why it turns to water, of course.  And all that snow made enough water to flood the whole campus.  So instead of skiing through tunnels of snow, we water skied from our dorms to class.  The college was very cooperative and replaced their shuttle buses with motor boats for the rest of that school year.  They even bought an old steamboat and turned that into the cafeteria.”

Just then the front door opened.

“Grandma!” our grandson reached up to her for a hug.

My wife hugged the boy and turned to me with a wink.  “So what mischief are you two scoundrels up to?” she asked.

“Grampa was telling me about the steamboat cafeteria at his college.”

“Actually, we were just getting our coats so we could go out and enjoy this beautiful spring day. Isn’t that right, buddy?”

“Sure, Grampa - because it’s only a little bit cold outside – nowhere near as cold as it used to be when you were young.  I wish I could have seen those air cubes and the word balloons like you did when you were in college.”

“Air cubes?  Word balloons?  What kind of stories have you been filling this boy’s head with?” my wife put her hands on her hips and raised an eyebrow at me. 

“Never you mind,” I replied.  “The boy and I were just talking about the weather.  Nothing more than that,” I said grabbing my coat and pushing my grandson out the door.  “We’ll be back in a while.  Give my cell phone a ring when it’s time for dinner, honeybunch.”  I waved to my wife as I stepped outside and closed the door behind us.