My oldest son, Tim, has a problem. With a white, powdery substance. No, not that white, powdery substance; he’s always been obsessed with snow. And, it doesn’t typically end up his nose. Except on the rare occasion when he might take a particularly spectacular tumble on a ski run, yielding what used to be known as a, “yard sale,” due to the widespread scattering of the skier’s accessories all over the hill: the goggles might be over there, and the poles might be down there, and the skis might have slid to that spot there, and the hip flask, well, who knows where that went?
Tim, pictured above with his two sons, Wyatt and Isaac, in a snow fort of their making, has been fascinated with snow since he was their age. I remember Tim dragging me out in the snow at the first appearance of flakes, and seeing his face light up as if it were Christmas morning. There is a malady termed, “Seasonal Affective Disorder” (a/k/a “SAD”), which negatively affects some people’s moods in the wintertime, when the sun is largely absent, particularly in the Midwest. I have assigned the name, “Lack of Snow Disorder” (a/k/a “LSD”) to the negative mood impact experienced by Tim, when there is a particularly long stretch of time between substantial snowfalls in his region.
We lived in areas generally supported by adequate amounts of snowfall, as Tim was growing up, including: Chicago, Philadelphia, and Detroit. Thank goodness we didn’t drag him to Dallas, or Los Angeles - his LSD impact would have jumped off the charts (I’m just now realizing that this column includes far too many double-entendre, illicit drug references; I resolve here and now to put a hard stop to that).
Living in Chicago, we utilized snow in such things as, sledding, snowman-building, and snowball fights. And, I taught Tim to ski. He long ago surpassed my limited downhill skiing skills, with which I fully came to grips some years ago, as I was skiing with him on a particularly steep, mogul-filled run. As I collected my accessories, in the wake of a nasty fall, I slung my skis and poles over my shoulder, and marched down the rest of the hill, on the side of the run - a “walk of shame,” if you will - my pride severely damaged, but the rest of my limbs intact.
Tim’s search for snow took him to a ski camp in British Columbia one summer, a camp conducted on a glacier, and to New Zealand for heli-skiing on his honeymoon. And, a move to Denver for a few years, where snow is not just a passing fad, but a religion. My son is in a mixed marriage, by the way: Tim is an inveterate skier, but his wife, Shaune, is a snowboarder. Somehow, those crazy kids make it work. I’ve no doubt that their pre-nuptial agreement spelled out quite explicitly how the children were to be raised (and, by that I mean, what devices would be attached to their feet as they rode up the chairlift).
Tim had a solution for those times when Mother Nature wouldn’t cooperate, and dump a pile of snow on our doorstep; he built a snowmaking machine from scratch, as a teenager. He said one day, “Alright, Dad, we’ve got to go to Home Depot now, and get an air compressor, and some plastic tubing,” and some other things that I can’t recall at the moment.
We went to Home Depot, and got those things, and he built a functioning snowmaking machine. This was before instructional videos regarding virtually anything you can imagine were widely available on YouTube. Typing the phrase, “Instructional Videos,” into the search bar on the YouTube website just now, reveals much about us as a society, I believe. Included in the first ten topics are four targeted at teaching students, particularly young students: “Toddlers,” “Kindergarten,” “Teachers,” and “Students.” Also in the top ten is something called, “Cricut,” which apparently is a machine for cutting various materials for craft projects, such as vinyl, leather, and fabric. Also in the initial dropdown selections, and I’m not judging here, is, “How to ride a unicycle.” The key takeaway for me from this exhaustive research is that we feel helpless and ill-equipped to manage our young children (particularly during a pandemic), and simply wish to escape by cutting things, and peddling away on a unicycle.
In any event, the internet was certainly in place, and Tim likely gleaned research material from various sources, to inform his efforts. I’m here to tell you that we awoke to a (very concentrated) pile of snow in our yard many times, whereas our neighbors had not one flake of snow. I think Tim’s long-term business strategy was to sell his snowmaking services for parties, and other events, as a novelty. Perhaps he missed the boat by not coupling that marketing plan with another of his businesses: snow removal. Imagine the synergies clearly in place with those two businesses. I see that same symbiotic relationship evident in lawn maintenance companies, who sell fertilization services, and then turn around and market lawn-cutting services, to manage your fast-growing lawn. Crazy like a fox, no?
Snow has played a starring role on stage and screen for many years now. A recent search of movies included on imdb.com containing the word, “snow",” reveals seventy-two such movie titles, including three entitled simply, “Snow.” Now, that’s confusing to me, although one is set in Bosnia, one in Minneapolis, and the third is a musical, so, presumably, if you began watching the “Snow” movie you had chosen, it would become apparent fairly quickly whether or not you had landed on the right one; I suspect these three movies have little in common thematically, other than the presence of snow, perhaps.
One of the most famous movies focused on the presence of (or, rather, lack of) snow, is 1954’s “White Christmas,” featuring Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, and Rosemary Clooney. Snow is lacking in Vermont in this movie (which, according to another of my sons who lives there, is generally not the case), and that has created a looming business crisis for a resort-owner. In addition to, “White Christmas,” (FYI, the “white” referred to in the song is, snow - I just wanted to make that clear, without inserting a double-entendre, illicit drug reference here, per my commitment above) the eponymous hit song, there is another song, entitled, “Snow,” which I recall is performed on a train-ride to Vermont from New York City. My own personal, snow-centric movie is, “Groundhog Day,” which is included in the list of seventy-two films on imdb.com (and, although I can’t actually see it happening, in my mind, I’m seeing many of you nodding your heads along with me).
My son is a happy man right now, because his neighborhood has been blessed with a ton of snow, producing the awesome snow fort pictured above. And, there may, or may not be, videos posted on YouTube of Tim performing ski jumps off the roof of his house. Kids, don’t try this at home!