Snowy Swatchy - Knittah's Thoughts

I grew up in Buffalo, New York. Anyone over a certain age in the United States probably remembers hearing about the Blizzard of '76. I was there. The snow was so high, we could stand on six feet high drifts. School was cancelled for two weeks. The President declared Buffalo a disaster area (something that my parents found redundant).

I was in the third grade, and my brother was in first grade. I love my brother, but to say we bickered a lot as kids would be an understatement. Everything was shut down, including the universities where my parents worked. The city itself was closed to all traffic except emergency personnel, and my recollection is that National Guard road blocks enforced the driving ban.

After about a week in the house with my brother and me, my parents had enough. They had to go to work or lose their minds. My mom worked at the research wing of a hospital, but her i.d. did not indicate that she was not medical personnel. So she and my dad drove into the city, and used her i.d. to get past the road block. Of course, this is all what I remember and not necessarily what happened. I don't know, for example, who stayed with my brother and me while they made their "dangerous" run into the city.

Now that I no longer live in Buffalo, I never get tired of snow. To me, snow is about hot chocolate, my mom cross-country skiing to the store for milk, no school, watching the dog shovel paths in the snow with his nose, fresh cookies, and snuggling under a blanky.

In my opinion, Swatchy could not have chosen a better place to make his debut!