By Gina Long
“Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen”
“My Ántonia” by Willa Cather
Kansas is again hunkering down as another winter storm sweeps through the area.
Michael and I usually meet on Sundays to set the week’s editorial calendar and plan for longer-range events we want to cover.
Our banter combines serious business and light-hearted ribbing as we comb different websites and Facebook groups for story ideas.
In January, I told Michael the story about how, yes, I really did walk to school, UPHILL BOTH WAYS.
I was born in Hutchinson, and my stepfather was the chief engineer and manager of a chain of Hutchinson-based radio stations. When the chain was sold, he found a more lucrative opportunity as a radio engineer for the Union Pacific Railroad, so our family relocated to western Nebraska.
Kansas has some genuinely terrifying snowstorms, but nothing like Nebraska. The winds come howling out of Colorado and Wyoming, gaining speed and pulling snow with them. Whiteout conditions are common.
I remember one year when I caught bronchitis. We lived south of town in a neighborhood scattered with small acreages on some Platte River Valley bluffs. Sometimes, it snowed so much that we were cut off from town for up to a week. My parents ran out of cough syrup and called around to the neighbors. A kind couple arrived on snowshoes with a bottle of something vile-tasting but effective. My parents invited them to sit by the fireplace, have some of my mother’s delicious apple dumplings, and warm up before undertaking the half-mile hike home over several steep hills.
During a recent editorial meeting, I was grousing about the cold and ice because it was slippery, and, to say it plainly, I don’t bounce like I used to. Michael gave me a side-eye and said, “I’ll bet you used to walk to school uphill both ways.”
I responded, “I most certainly did!” I pulled up Google Maps and traced the 1.5-mile route from my childhood home to the small country elementary school.
And yes, it was uphill both ways.
So Saturday evening, as I write this, I think of today’s howling wind and the incoming snow.
I think about hot cocoa, warm fireplaces, good neighbors, hearty laughter, and how we shake our fists at winter.
Everything is uphill both ways now, but spring begins in five weeks.
