Wintertime in Southern Illinois wasn’t really all that exciting.
Not much snow.
Not much ice on the ponds.
No honking of wild geese going south.

More likely sleet.
More likely freezing rain.
Long nights for sure, and short days.

Wintertime wasn’t all that exciting.

But when it did snow,
when the ponds did freeze up,
we learned to use these joy things and use them well.

It snowed hard one morning in my fourth grade.
Snowed hard, and the snow stuck.
Soon snow was a foot deep in the schoolyard.
We looked out the windows at the snow falling
And at the foot of snow on the ground.
Our teacher, Miss Gladys,
She looked at the snow falling too,
And at the snow on the ground.

“Okay, recess! We’ll take a long recess today!”

We threw snowballs.
Some of the little kids got snow in the face
And cried.
So did some of the girls.
I didn’t.

Miss Gladys showed us how to play Fox and Geese.
We had never played a game in the snow.
Fox and Geese was fun with Miss Gladys.

We made a snow fort.
We made a snow fort by rolling snow into giant snowballs.
Then we made another snowfort,
And had snowball war between the two snowforts.

We had a really long recess.
It lasted all morning.
We still had noontime recess.
After noontime recess,
we started right in on afternoon recess.
We had recess almost all day long.

It didn’t snow much in Southern Illinois,
But when it did,
We sure liked to use it.
We specially had fun in the snow with Miss Gladys.