As a child I could never understand why grown-ups did not welcome snow. The adults in my parents’ circle of acquaintances, at least, wanted no part of the white stuff.     

They might dream of a white Christmas, at least in song, but their hardheaded preference even for that fabled day was for bare streets and sidewalks. They would be delighted with this winter, which (as I write, at least) has been almost snow-free.

This attitude we young people considered Scrooge-like. Our elders were not only violating New England’s hereditary rights to Currier and Ives snowy winter scenes, but they were depriving us of outdoor fun.

My family lived on one of Watertown’s hilliest streets; it provided a fine surface for sledding. We kids looked forward to sliding down the hill at high speed, no matter the peril. Until after WWII, skiing was not a popular sport; we and most of our neighbors did not have equipment for sliding down the mountains up north.

Those storms that led to no-school announcements received a heartfelt welcome from every kid. To have lamented the loss of a day in the classroom would have been unthinkable. Expressed, it might have led to excommunication from your circle of friends.

Snowball fights brought us pleasure and, for us boys, gave vent to some of our macho instincts. It was fun to throw at one another; ungallantly aiming at girls enhanced the experience.

Snow provided us with work, too, welcome work because it was done not for our families but for pay. I loved putting on my overshoes and venturing forth into the new-fallen snow, seeking employment. Armed with my shovel, I would do the minimum for my family before venturing to ring the doorbells of neighbors.

The five dollars that you could earn shoveling a driveway was a special boon. It could entail heavy lifting but the reward made the effort worth it. With the proceeds we could buy frappes and other heady food and drink.

Now, of course, I have come to understand why my parents and their kind did not welcome snow. I now experience it more as an threat to my mobility than an inducement to fun. No longer do I throw snowballs at humans of any age, nor do I indulge in sledding.

As to shoveling for neighbors, now I am not allowed to shovel even for myself. In fact, my spouse and I have recently signed up with a contractor who has pledged to remove snow from our sidewalks. His company will remove anything over four inches  deep, leaving us free to sweep off more superficial covering.

All of my age peers in surrounding neighborhoods can now take advantage of this service. This counts as one of the amenities intended by an ad hoc elder planning group to increase our chances of remaining in our own homes. Drawing inspiration from Beacon Hill Village, we hope to enable residents of a certain age to stay put rather than being forced to move elsewhere.

Despite my later-life attitude toward snow storms, the esthetic qualities of snow have not been lost on me. Perhaps more than before, I stand ready to admire the beauty of newly-landed snow as it adorns our environment. It’s just that I want our region’s current dearth of snow storms to continue through this whole winter.

What I most appreciate about snow, when it does fall, is its power to bring out our neighbors─ “bring out” in both senses of the word. They come out of their houses in order to shovel their sidewalks, to free their cars, or to kibitz with the likes of me, no longer doing either.

They come out of their shells also, those that have them. People in my environs, at least, open themselves up when they are standing outside amid the latest snowfall. They find it hard to resist impulses to be sociable and thus exchange observations with nearby residents and passers-by.

Especially on those bright, blue-skyed days that often follow snowstorms, do neighbors slide into good moods. Common tasks or maybe common dilemmas put most people into higher spirits than usual. It becomes harder to be curmudgeonly when everyone is engaged in the same obvious situation.

It usually proves to be ideal for gathering news about neighbors. If you possess reportorial instincts like mine, you can learn facts that can surprise you. Not real dirt, mind you; some of us still feel scruples about digging up anything like that. But good clean gossip material─that’s different.

So, on the subject of snow, I have evolved to a position half-way between my parents’ view of it and the way I looked on it as a child. As on so many other issues of major importance, I find myself in the middle, this time not an uncomfortable place to be.

Richard Griffin