Snow

First day of snow. I have to admit, against my better judgement, snow excites me. It must be from growing up in 'The snow belt', or the prospect of a day off school. However, unlike many American school children, we, my siblings and I, never had the pleasure of a typical snow day. Most children, when hearing of a snow day would instantly called friends and neighbors to plan a day that would pass in sledding, making snowmen, and drinking hot chocolate. We would, instead, call our friends and tell them that we had to work. We were so called 'cheap labor', not that we really minded, we did, after all, get a little pay and we would entertain ourselves by seeing who could shovel the hardest, the fastest, or who could sing the loudest. In below zero weather we would take turns being picked up in the plow trucks, that were usually driven by my dad and his employee Rob, or when my older siblings were old enough to drive, one of them. Since snow plowing and shoveling had to take place when most of the cars and people where out of the way, in the large shopping center 'Points East', that my dad was in charge of, our hours consisted of  3:30a.m until first light or 10pm until the early morning. Or, sometimes, all day and all night. The worse feeling in the World was when, after finishing the last few shovel fulls on the sidewalk, that ran along the various shops, we would discover that  the snow had mischeviously crept back on with twice as much thickness as before.
 Once in awhile we would discover the miraculous powers of lake effect snow, waking up in our little town wrapped in a cozy blanket of white,  and driving out to 'Points East', a twenty minute drive from us, were we would meet with a wet snowfree parking lot! Those were blissful moments, though often, before the fun began, we were forced to do our school work, since being home schooled mean't as long as you were home, you did school. We had, however, tactics to get out of school and spent many a day out playing in the snow.