excerpt from a letter to a friend...
The last time it snowed in reedley (my hometown), I think I was 6 or 7 yrs old (about 1957..as you guessed, snow day is a very unusual thing here).
I woke up before anyone else and when I looked out the window, I almost didn’t know what it was, but in a flash I remembered all those old films about a “white Christmas” and I knew that it must be snow. As if in an out-of-body experience, I started to laugh & squeal up & down the hall, waking my mom & dad, brother & even my grumpy sister.
My brother, gary & I were the first ones to get dressed & out the door. We immediately ran up & down the yard grabbing the snow off the ground and throwing it at each other…mom & dad came out and took pictures of the snow & us playing in it…but mainly just of the snow. After my parents went back into the house, tired of novelty, they started to call all our family & friends to see if they had snow too, as if the snow gods were that selective on snow placement.
Gary & I had noticed that the snow was melting and there wasn’t a whole lot there to begin with…so we gathered all the snow we could find in both the front & back yards, any on the hedges & side yard too. At the end of all this gathering, we had a small, but decent size snowman with a carrot nose…black stone eyes & twiggy hair.
We were so proud of it, though it was a little smudged with dirt & blades of grass…we rushed into the house yelling for mom & dad to come out and see & take a picture of our creation …BUT when we came back out, the snowman was gone…we saw the back end of an old rusty ford truck driving off fast with our snowman peaking out from the flatbed….OMG! OUR SNOWMAN WAS KIDNAPPED!!!!!
Both gary & I were crying uncontrollably…crying for our parents to call the police & get a manhunt going…I still remember my older sister laughing at us, and my mom pretending to call the police and reporting the crime…I loved my mom even more for that & realized what a bitch my sister was & is to this day.
