Love or hate: Will folks ever make up their minds about the white stuff in Central New York?
By Matthew Liptak
Snow has charisma, or riz, as some call it, up until you’re swearing at it.
Snow is beautiful. Snow is awful. Snow is work. Snow is play. Will folks ever make up their minds about the white stuff in Central New York?
I don’t know.
But I know they’ll always be both digging it and digging out of it.
Reflecting on over four decades of growing up in the winter wonderland of Central New York, I thought I’d jot down a few reflections. I relocated, but much of my heart and my life remains Upstate. I spent seven winters on a rural 60-acre farm off a dirt road in Chenango County and 13 years growing up in the second smallest city in New York state, brownie points if you know the community. And then I spent a couple decades in Binghamton, Buffalo and Syracuse.
There have been many adventures.
Pleasures
The best part of snow is the fun of it. Even the Grinchiest of us is a little caught, at least for a moment, by the wonder of seeing the first snowflakes of the season. It’s a sign that nature’s deep sleep has come upon us once again. The forest grows quiet and serene. Sometimes with only the crunch of our footsteps plowing down into crusted snow or the swoosh of skies evaporating into the stillness.
Nature is not the only wonder of a snowy winter. We have learned to make our own wonders. In every small or large community of the region there is usually or once was, a sledding hill. Vying for the time of digital connected families, is the thrill of racing downhill on a plastic sled, Flexible Flyer, or toboggan.
The intensity, immersion and creativity of digital gaming can be hard to beat. But try being the first person on a three-person toboggan dive-bombing down a snow-filled 100-yard hill and picking up speed until you all have to bail out as the farmer’s barbed-wire fence approaches. That is real immersion in our snow-filled winters. True story.
Follow that up with coming back to a warm cozy home and your mom serving the three of you steaming hot chocolate and you’ve got childhood memories for a lifetime.
Don’t get me started on snowmen, snow angels, snowball fights, snowshoeing and snowmobiling … the list goes on.
Perspiration
But it’s not all fun and games. It’s work. If you have a snowblower, maybe it’s not as much work for you as it is for the poor palooka down the street who only has a shovel. And you might be hard-pressed to get a kid to help you dig out for $10 or $20. They’re inside drinking hot chocolate and gaming.
Some people make a bit of a living off the white stuff though, on a heavy snow year, plowing out driveways and parking lots under too-often laden gray skies. Others work for DOT and spend a career doing battle with snow on our roads so the rest of us can get to where we need to get to.
There’s a lot of money in the snow business if you play your cards right and the weather cooperates.
Pitfalls
And there’s risks too. Winter driving is the most notorious. Driving on it, driving through it, can just be dang dangerous. The best policy, which some always relearn the hard way the first snowy day on the road, is to go slow and go easy on the brakes.
I’ve had a few instances where I’ve forgotten that. Leaving work off Carrier Circle in a storm, I spun out off the road, hit a road sign and got stuck. The nice cop checked to see I was OK and I then had to pay several hundred dollars for the installation of the new road sign!
Conditioning is important too. It doesn’t hurt if, before you dig out of a deluge of snow, you’re in reasonably fit condition, so you don’t leave your wife or other loved ones by the way of a cardiac issue. A shovelful of snow is a heavy thing and not for a faint or plaque-filled heart.
The lowdown
So what is it? Winter wonderland? Or royal pain in the posterior?
As everyone knows who has ever embraced Central New York’s winter to honest and full effect, it’s both. Snow can be our best friend, helping us to make memories that stand up to the test of time, so we can enjoy those memories in the rocking chair of our elder years. Or it can seem to be a menace, wrecking our plans, making for miserable moments or even leading to disaster.
Winter and our winter snow, embraces us every year and often we may need to brace against it. But remember to embrace it back too. It can also be wild good fun. It can be both the best and worst of Central New York. Somehow, we usually all make through to spring and the seasons go on.
I say carpe snow! And if you know a kid who’ll shovel out my driveway, let me know.