In December I heard a distinctly southern voice ask a distinctly un-New England question at Dan & Whit’s in Norwich. Snowflakes were falling and a few inches coated the ground.
“Are y’all gonna close early because of the weather?” the woman asked.
The cashier, a picture of professionalism, responded in the negative.
As a former but not current store employee, I was a bit looser in my reaction.
“You’re not from here, are you?” I asked, with a smile.
It was slightly snarky, but it was just my way of saying Norwich residents hold this truth to be self-evident, that Dan & Whit’s closes for one reason and one reason only: The clock says 9 p.m.
The exchange got me thinking about one stark reality of Upper Valley life. When it comes to the weather, there is a simple choice: Embrace it or leave.
Why wouldn’t you be an embracer? Think about everything you would miss if you lived in a warm climate. Dry hands so cold that they crack and ooze blood. Budgeting 10 minutes every morning to layer for the freeze-and-thaw cycle of your outdoor and indoor lives. Trying to guess which product will actually melt ice and snow without destroying the lawn, garden or the planet. A single set of tires? Convenient, perhaps, but pure folly. The real question is whether or not you have studs on your snows. No cold means no Canada Goose jackets, no après ski, no hot chocolate or boeuf bourguignon.
Consider the paucity of vocabulary without bona fide winter: Sayonara balaclava. Goodbye ice fog and freezing drizzle.
Upper Valley native Molly Cronenwett now lives in North Carolina. She told me that people there have never heard of frost heaves.
Mister man, I am all set with a life without frost heaves.
Yes, people here are tough. But have we gotten softer? Back in the 20th century, I wonder whether we weathered the weather better.
One day last month, I was informed that my son would have indoor recess because temperatures hovered between below zero and 10. I thought this sensible. But my childhood barked at me: “What the heck is indoor recess?”
I asked former Marion Cross School Principal Milton Frye for his recollections from the previous century. In an email, he said, “I have no memory of not letting students go out in the cold. I remember students skating when it was zero degrees.”
He also commented on a phenomenon that has been perplexing me: closing school prior to actual bad weather. Perhaps you experienced this recently, the email at 4 p.m. with no precipitation falling outside, telling you that tomorrow’s school has been delayed or canceled. I explored every corner of my memory, looking for a night in my childhood when I went to bed knowing that we had a snow day the following morning. I came up empty. Frye confirmed my memory, noting, “The other day they canceled school the night before the expected storm. No one would have dared to do that (previously). What if it didn’t snow, or sleet or rain?”
Now nestled in her hot and humid North Carolina, Cronenwett recalled a Nordic ski meet from her youth that seems unlikely nowadays. “It was so cold that there was no wax in existence that would work on our skis at that temperature. And I remember thinking ‘Why are we doing this? Why don’t they just cancel the race?’ ”
Chris Clark, a classmate who now lives in California, recalled his high school hockey days. The team practiced before dawn, before principals or superintendents made the call to cancel. He did “not recall a single instance of a practice being canceled due to inclement weather. Players woke up before sunrise with the expectation that their presence was required at practice, regardless of the conditions on the road. One morning, when black ice blanketed the roads, two or three teammates’ cars went off the road, including the parent of one player too young to drive.”
Did they make it to practice nonetheless?
He responded with one word: “Obviously.”
Dick Dodds, who has been at the helm of the Hanover boys varsity hockey for more than 30 years, has seen some bad weather on practice days. He recalled driving to the rink in 20- degree-below-zero conditions on a morning in the 1980s. In the darkness, he saw a boy on a bicycle. It was one of his players, hockey bag strapped on like a backpack, sticks held across the handlebars, headed to practice.
I suspect that type of drive is still very much alive in kids today. I am not sure, however, if too many parents would let their children ride their bike in the dark in a similar situation.
Indeed, the default attitude seems to have shifted from the “grin-and-bear it” mindset of my youth to erring on the side of caution. Of course, two working parents want to know if there is school or not. And no one wants a tragedy with school kids.
Ultimately, being responsible for weather-related decisions is one of the world’s thankless jobs. Get it wrong and everyone is mad at you. Get it right and people are generally inconvenienced nonetheless. Does one cancel a contradance because of a blizzard? At what point is it too cold for outdoor activities? When is it too dangerous to drive to a child’s basketball game? Or to a friend’s house for dinner? Like so much of life, there does not seem to be an instruction manual for these questions.
But even if we are a bit more cautious today, this region is no place for lightweights. My dental hygienist told me she drives an hour each morning from Plymouth, N.H. The other day, when icy conditions closed schools here, she was at work and on time. Just like hundreds of thousands of people around Vermont and New Hampshire who understand that the weather here is proof of our Yankee independence and grit. It seems to me we are as tough as ever.
Even if our kids have an occasional indoor recess.
Mark Lilienthal lives in Norwich. He can be reached at mlilient@gmail.com.