By Richard R. Shaw
Special to The Weekly
Winter? Did you say “winter”? When snow drifted 20 feet and we couldn’t see out our windows? When five pairs of long johns made me feel like the Michelin Man? When 10-inch icicles in my nostrils meant a trip to the doctor?
Now that I have your attention, let me tell you how winter really was growing up in Bangor in the 1950s and ’60s. Winter was an adventure back then, when pre-global warming temperatures allowed skating on Thanksgiving and an occasional Halloween slog in the snow. People stayed closer to home in my youth, as we ventured out in stormy weather only to buy groceries or to visit with my grandmothers; I had three.
Let’s start with dressing for school in the morning. After a steaming bowl of rolled oats, I pulled on thermal underwear, itchy woolen socks, a flannel shirt and corduroy trousers.
Then came a heavy coat, rubber boots with metal snaps that got clogged with ice and snow, and topped by a red and white Paul Bunyan cap, all the rage after the statue was dedicated in 1959. I was 7 then and full of vim and vigor.
The energy came in handy as I walked to the Longfellow School on Bangor’s Center Street and later the Mary Snow School on Broadway. Snowbanks were high but, like today, the city plowed the sidewalks. The aroma of wet mittens on the school radiators filled the air. We kids walked home for lunch and went through the dressing ritual all over again — and yet again for our return in the afternoon.
Snow shoveling took hours, unlike today when everyone seems to own a snow thrower.
But winter wasn’t all work back then. Weekends were devoted to sledding on Norfolk Street, which the city blocked from Montgomery to Congress. One day I was tooling down the hill in my Flexible Flyer when a girl in my path went flying. I felt terribly about it, but never told a soul, not even my parents or brother and sister. So here it is, folks, my confessional: She got up giggling, so all was well on Norfolk.
We neighborhood kids made snow angels, built snow castles, snowmen, and got into snowball fights. It’s amazing how many uses of snow we dreamed up. We even ate snow unless it was discolored by dogs.
Tobogganing meant a trip to the Penobscot Valley Country Club in Orono. Afterward, we went across the road for hot cocoa at the Oronoka restaurant, where we were serenaded by organist Norm Lambert.
Dec. 30, 1962 looms large in my memory. That was the day a blizzard buried eastern Maine in 25.5 inches of snow. Schools closed for a week. Neighbors helped neighbors shovel off roofs and fire hydrants. Our friend, Willie Curtis, put chains on his Buick’s tires. We heard him coming blocks away, along with a chain-equipped hook-and-ladder truck based at the Center Street firehouse.
Spring finally came in May, June, July … I forget. But to those who think today’s winters are severe, I say, look back to the ’50s and ’60s.
That’s when Old Man Winter came knocking in early November and hung around for a while.
Richard R. Shaw lives in Bangor.