Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 27, 1993 TAG: 9302270211
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LON WAGNER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
GROWN-UPS FIND EXCUSES TO GO PLAY IN THE SNOW
We did what you do with snow.We played in it. Walked in it. Slid in it. Threw it at each other.
Those of us who went to work - the combination of snow and a Friday was too much for some - didn't really work that much.
Friday wasn't a great day for the mailman who got stuck in the snow. Nor for the Valley Metro driver on York Road Southwest who had a heck of a time in the morning on that not-so-big hill.
But for those who don't feel like winter has been here unless it snows at least once, Friday was the day: One big goof-off and act-like-a-kid-again mental health day.
It was a day when Arnie West, 69, even had fun clearing her driveway.
"I'm so glad," she said. "You just look out and it just does something to you. It's so nice. I'm glad to see one come."
It's been four years since the last one came; the last "real" snow, as we Northern transplants snidely call it.
This was actual snow. A snow that didn't begin with promise, then deteriorate after 20 minutes into huge, wet, heavy flakes that turned Southwest Virginia to one big slushy mess.
For this snow, you didn't need an umbrella. But toboggans, sleds, inner tubes, plywood and anything else that slid across the snow came in handy.
By 2 p.m., Mike Cross and his thirtysomething friends had been tobogganing on a hill at Fallon Park for four hours. Cross grew up in Roanoke, but spent about seven years in San Diego before moving back to this area. In sunny Southern California, he missed the winters.
"The weather there's a lot better; the pay there's a lot better, but no snow," Cross said. "Here, you get snow once a year - except the last seven years when it's been lying to us."
Tamara Driscoll couldn't make it to work Friday morning. The roads were too treacherous. But she did make it out to toboggan with Cross and his friends.
"I got one thing to say," Driscoll said in defense of taking the day off, "the only reason I'm here is that guy has chains on his van and he picked me up."
Then there was John Herron, 25, and his friend, who wore a ski mask and assumed the name A.J. Smith. Smith's real name couldn't be used in the newspaper - "you never know who might read it" - because he, too, had skipped work.
And Herron? "I had to play hooky cause I couldn't drive to Covington."
So they stayed in Southeast Roanoke and made a 7-foot-tall Ninja Turtle snowman.
At last, snow. Now we can watch out for that first robin.