Icebox...

Well, first of all, you have to be old enough to know what an "icebox" is, don't you? I'll try not to make today's blog be about getting older, but I'm getting older, and a lot of stuff just keeps reminding me of that, like using the term, "icebox." Political "dirty trickster" Roger Stone was indicted this week, and came to the front of the news queue. As part of that coverage, it was reported--and backed up by photographs--that he has a portrait of late President Richard M. Nixon tattooed on his back. Two younger types this week asked me who Richard Nixon was. Older, I'm telling you, older! Or maybe just old?

"When I was your age, I used to walk three miles to school in the most frigid weather carrying a gym bag, a trumpet case, and my books!" We old people say things like that to younger types. I might make two comments about this statement: 1. the younger types ask, "What's a gym bag?" and 2. every part of this statement is true for Yours Truly. I grew up in Oil City, PA, and attended my7th grade year (which was "Junior High" in that day) at South Side Junior High School. The building was actually condemned--also true! It was unsafe, and the third floor was blocked off with what sufficed as a police line in 1967. When we had assemblies in the auditorium, we had to take an umbrella in case it rained, because the roof leaked like a screen door on a submarine. The only redeeming thing about South Side was that it was just a few short blocks and a reasonable walk from my home, because I lived--you guessed it--on the South Side of town. However, commencing with the 8th grade, we were moved to the "new" Junior High, which was the old Senior High, as they had now moved into a beautiful new building in Hasson Heights, near where most of the richer people lived. The "new" Junior High was built into a hill that was on the North side of town, so not only did we have to walk much farther, but we had to climb "heartbreak hill" to get there. I can remember arriving at school huffing and puffing, wheezing, and dragging, only to then climb several flights of stairs to get to my homeroom. And when you were sucking serious air at 8:00AM, that "old smell" of the building--probably an amalgamation of asbestos, machine oil, cheap floor wax, and termite sawdust--just coated the inside of your lungs. Oh, and just before reaching "Heartbreak Hill," we had to cross railroad tracks bifurcated the town, and a train came by at about 7:50AM on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. SO, if we didn't beat the train, we had to stand there with all our hardware and freeze in the Winter, get drenched in the rain in the Spring, and baked in the sun as Summer approached. There were two saving graces to this whole exercise: we used to put stuff on the train tracks to get flattened by the locomotive; and the school building, itself, was in Ripley's "Believe it or Not" for being the only building that you could enter all five floors from the ground because it was built into the side of a mountain. Other than that, when that "Junior High" (they never came up with a modifier) was leveled by the wrecking ball a few decades ago, not many of us even got moist peepers.

Back to the "icebox." I will never forget the icy mornings making that trek. Did I say that we also had to walk across a three-span, steel bridge with open grate walkways to GET to the aforementioned train tracks? It is called the State Street Bridge, it crosses the mighty Allegheny River, and the wind whipped across that sucker like a tornado, pulled out straight like you'd stretch a Slinky. Even to this day, when I walk in an icy cold wind--like what is coming upon us this week--I have visual flashbacks of that bridge in Winter. It was so cold that if someone threw a snowball at you it felt like an oven-fresh bun, by comparison. And with my big ears, my head kept turning into the wind, and I got the full force of it. Meanwhile, my friends would crouch behind my trumpet case and my gym bag.

"But why didn't your parents take you to school?" Nobody's parents took them to school. Nobody's. If you didn't live far enough out to ride the bus (I think you had to be considered "rural"), you walked. Most families owned one car, if they were lucky, and the working parent--usually the dad--had to be at work by 7:00AM, or even earlier if he was doing shift work. That's why they built the new Senior High School on "the Heights"--the wealthy families' kids had a short walk, and it just crossed the "rural" barrier for us South Siders, so we DID get to ride a bus up there for Senior High. Of course, we stood in the middle of a busy intersection waiting for the bus, and in Winter, we had to wait at least 45 minutes for a late bus before our tardiness would be excused. These were the worst of times, these were the worst of times.

With temperatures and wind chills being forecast at State Street Bridge levels this week, we at St. Paul's already cancelled Wednesday activities, and our local schools have declared an "icebox" day. Thanks to the progress of human evolution, we make these decisions in 2019. Our kids will be healthier, safer, and better for it. They never cancelled school in 1968 for a "Polar Vortex," even if they HAD known what one was. And not a day goes by that I don't think about assessing the damage this caused to our psyches, and how many points we dropped on the I.Q. scale because of frozen brain cells. It's weeks like this that make me break out in a seriously threatening and diabolical laugh anytime someone dares mention "the good old days." Stay safe, stay warm, stay IN, Beloved. Spring is out there...