What kind of delicate flowers are we raising these days?
Allen County school districts follow a simple guideline when temperatures drop: If wind chills reach minus 25 degrees, then school will either be delayed or closed. All four local districts are closed today.
At minus16 degrees, it takes a full 10 minutes for unexposed skin to achieve frostbite. Don't these kids know that in our day, we had to walk 10 miles to school each through six-foot snow drifts -- and it was uphill both ways! And when we got there, we just didn't just have to chop the wood for the fireplace -- we had to build the fireplace first! Bad-da-bing.
Just kidding. I notice that a wind chill of minus 25 is pretty effective in keeping a lot of people home. My garbage wasn't picked up. All the schools were closed. People weren't going to offices. All evening meetings and events were canceled.
You know who did have to go to work, no excuses allowed? Newspaper and TV people, so we could perform the vital task of telling you everything you weren't doing today.
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And let's not forget the POLICE and FIREMEN (who provide stories that YOU can report DID occur while "we" weren't doing "anything" today (but trying to keep warm)...
;)
I recall back in "The Stone Age" when I was in 1st through 4th grade, we lived in Minneapolis Minnesota & Utica New York, respectively (circa 1963 to 1967) and I don't recall having any "snow days" or "temperature days". We had this ridiculous notion back then you should dress for the weather.
What a concept.
Utica..now that's some COLD country up there...!
Hell, in Philly, we walked to school...three blocks, but that was an age when we had a LOT more "neighborhood" schools, and none of this "Bus the kids crosstown" BS.
BG..Before we ended up in Ft Wayne in 1968, I just assumed EVERYONE had winter (totally snow covered & temps at 0) from Halloween until the end of April. We lived at the top of a 3 mile hill in Utica and my old man NEVER got stuck in his 1960 Chevy Station Wagon with chains!
By the way, a great car for the drive-in movies in the summer too, he toss us kids up on the roof with sleeping bags!
Ahhhh....those were good times!
Love the chains (ALL the police and city depts. had them, as did my dad when he could afford to buy a used car...yeah, we were that "unfortunate" for a while). I still have a set of those police chains in the garage...just in case.
We pretty much WALKED or took the bus, or got a ride from someone else to get around.
We basically did NOT know what snowdays were (until it got REAL DEEP...like HIP deep).
Dad pulled me on the sled to the store down the middle of the avenue so we could get food.
That I recall.
Today, people waddle down the middle of the street when the weather is beautiful, because sidewalks are too "civilized" (apparently).
It's BIZARRO World, indeed.