Reflections on an East Coast Snow Day Shut Down

Snow days were epic when I was in school. My brother and I would go outside to build a snow man. Then we would get bored with playing together peacefully and start a snowball fight. Then, inevitably, we would get mischievous and turn the snowballs into ice balls to for a little extra sting.

 It was great. 

Our block was alive. Everybody was outside. We would see other young men in the neighborhood go out shoveling snow to earn a few extra bucks. But they knew not to stop by our house. Why would our parents pay someone to shovel snow, when they had two sons, and we had four perfectly good hands between us? Our "pay" was the fact that our parents fed us every day and bought school clothes and just about everything else we asked for—providing they could afford it, and we behaved like citizens.

Our snow day jobs were to shovel the walkway, clean off the car and take a ride with my pop if he felt like going out. Sometimes he would just go to the store to get a loaf of bread to see who else made it out in the snow.

 After a fun day of light chores and hearty play, we would go in the house to eat dinner. Sometimes it was beef stew. Other times it was roast chicken. No matter what the main course was, it wasn’t dinner if it didn’t involve rice. My mother is a proud South Carolina native, so rice was our staple dish. To hear mom tell it, “Everything goes with rice.”

 As an adult, snow days are somewhat different. 

Schools and city offices around the region were closed on Monday, January 6, 2025. Many stores and gyms were open. 

I haven’t built a snow man in years. I shovel my walkway as quickly as possible. And I put tarps over the cars, so I don’t have to clean them off. 

Admittedly, however, I still like to go to the store to see who made it out in the snow.  

And I still love to eat good, hot food when I come in from the cold. My go to dish is usually beef stew or roast chicken. And even though I’m much more carb conscious these days, most often dinner involves rice. 

Like mom said, “Everything goes with rice.”

I hope you enjoyed your snow day as much I did, even if you experience differently than you did when you were in school.

(My Journey with Mark Tyler is a column about the joys and complexities of life as seen through the eyes of Mark Tyler, the founder and publisher of atlanticcityfocus.com. Mark can be reached at marktyler@atlanticcityfocus.com)

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