FUN IN THE SNOW

The excitement of winter’s first snow was quickly forgotten as we moved into the routine of winter at Chain O’ Lake School. Only a few days after the first snowfall, another one arrived, with more fury and spunk than the first and with more snow, too. This meant someone had to shovel paths to the outhouses, to the pump house and woodshed, to the mailbox nailed on a post at the edge of the country road, and to the flagpole so we could continue our flag-raising ceremony each morning. The flagpole ceremony was canceled only when the temperature dipped below zero, and even then the youngster who had received the great honor of putting up the flag each day continued to do so, below zero or not. On those frigid days the rest of us stayed inside the schoolhouse and pledged our allegiance to the flag while we stood at our desks or, on the coldest mornings, huddled around the woodstove, shivering and trying to get warm.

During recess we played fox and geese, and when we grew bored with that we made gigantic snow forts or decided that flinging snowballs at each other was sufficiently interesting that we spent an entire recess doing that. There were the usual disagreements, of course, most often resulting from someone failing to adhere to the rules of snowball engagement that prohibited hitting a fellow student in the head. This happened regularly, sometimes by accident, but frequently on purpose; a firmly packed snowball to the head was a practical way of settling a disagreement that may have occurred a few days or even weeks previously. Of course the student hit in the head with a snowball usually wailed loudly to let everyone know that the snowball thrower had broken the first rule of civil snowball throwing. Then one of two things happened. If the majority of the students knew about the earlier disagreement and believed that the victim of the snowball to the head had it coming, they merely looked the other way and went on with what they were doing. But if the majority sided with the victim—who usually was an above-average actor, suggesting an injury that was many times worse than the reality of snow trickling down his neck—they grabbed the snowball thrower and washed his face with snow. At this point Miss Thompson usually appeared on the scene. She grabbed both the snowball thrower and the snowball receiver and marched them into the schoolhouse with harsh words for each, and no more recess for the rest of the week.

A simple snowball fight thus taught me something important about rules and punishment. There are rules to be followed, whether written or not, and there are consequences if they are not followed. One level of punishment was meted out by your peers, who quickly judged who was in the wrong and took appropriate action. But that was only the beginning of the punishment, for a greater force usually loomed over incidents like this: the schoolteacher, who always, no exception, had the last word. She didn’t usually spend much time trying to untangle who was right and who was wrong. It was far easier to punish both culprits. This provided a powerful example to the other students who may have considered settling some longstanding unhappiness with another student during a snowball fight.

But even our teacher couldn’t see everything that went on, even though most of us believed she had eyes on both sides of her head. Sometimes kids worked out for themselves what fair play meant and the appropriate (as deemed by the kids) punishment for breaking unspoken but well-known rules.

I found this out during a run-in I had with Clair Jenks. Clair was two or three years ahead of me and considerably bigger than I was; while I was four-foot-something tall, Clair was pushing toward six feet. And although he was mostly a decent kid, he did like to play dirty tricks on his classmates.

As soon as the snow was deep enough, sledding and skiing became the most popular playground activities at Chain O’ Lake. Lizzie Hatliff, who owned eighty acres of land surrounding the school (actually seventy-nine acres, as the one acre of school grounds was on her land), didn’t mind that we schoolkids used the long hill behind the school for our recess play. Shortly after a major snowfall, we were skiing on Hatliff’s Hill. The snow was fast, and the skiing was outstanding. I used homemade skis my Grandfather Witt had made from birch boards that he steamed with a teakettle so he could bend up the front ends. He then carved the turned-up ends to a point, so they closely resembled factory-made skis. He even nailed a strip of leather across each ski to hold my boots in place. Unfortunately, the skis did not have grooves on their bottom sides, so steering was challenging. But steering wasn’t a problem on Hatliff’s Hill, because after several trips down, the tracks in the snow were well worn, and my homemade skis followed them as a train follows railroad tracks.

On one of my trips down the hill I noticed that Clair Jenks had stayed at the bottom, standing to the side of the ski track. Just before I reached the bottom of the hill, he shoved one of his skis across the path in front of me, causing me to go headfirst into a snowdrift when I struck his outstretched ski. I crawled out of the drift, spitting and sputtering and feeling the cold snow sifting down my back. I found my skis in the drift; they appeared to be in better shape than I was. Clair was pointing at me and laughing. The other kids were watching and wondering what would happen next.

My father had a wicked temper, but he seldom showed it. Only once or twice did I see him in a full rage, and it was not pretty. I inherited his temper but also the wisdom to keep it under control in most situations. I thought what Clair had done was a mean, lowlife trick, but it was his pointing and laughing that set me off. I picked up one of my homemade birch skis, swung it in a big circle, and hit Clair alongside the head. He fell in the snow in a heap. He quickly stood back up, rubbing the place on his head where I had clobbered him. His red face was covered with snow, and he looked like he was going to cry. Just then the school bell rang.

Miss Murty, our teacher that year, quickly noticed that Clair was rubbing his head. She inquired if he’d been hurt during the noon break. I sat petrified at my desk. The other pupils had quickly taken out their work. They listened to the exchange but didn’t want any part of what they saw about to happen. Everyone knew what had taken place on the ski hill and why Clair was rubbing his head. I anticipated missing at least a week’s worth of recess and noon breaks, and maybe even some time after school.

“Happened at home this morning,” Clair said, “when I was doing barn chores.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. Now neither Clair nor I had to look forward to Miss Murty’s punishment, which I knew would have been severe.

Never again did Clair Jenks stick his ski out in front of me while we skied down Hatliff’s hill during noon break. I don’t think he tried any of his tricks on other kids at our school after that, either. The bump on the head appeared to have mellowed him, and Clair and I got along fine following that little disagreement on the ski hill. We had settled the problem without the need for the intervention of a higher authority.