This is my ninth year of blogging the A to Z Challenge. Everyday I will share something about my family’s life during 1950. This was a year that the USA federal census was taken and the first one that I appear in. At the end of each post I will share a book from my childhood collection.
My younger sister Pearl’s only memory of Springfield was of “Snow!!!! I remember looking through the front door glass and seeing snow on the porch all the way down the front walk and drifted against the car!”
I also have a memory of looking out of the door at snow up to the porch.
Photographs taken on Christmas day are the only ones I have of snow during 1950. There must have been some unphotographed snow earlier in the winter, because we are standing on the remnants.
That snowy photo is so precious! Funny how memories of snow stick with children from really early on…
The Multicolored Diary
I guess it’s such a dramatic change. I’ll have to survey my children to see if they have memories of snow.
We had a snow in Houston, and my cousins and I played in it at my grandmother’s house…we also have some great photos from it. Either in 49 or 50, but without going to the photos, I’d guess 49. Love your photos with your sis in the snow…or finding the one patch left!
’49 must have been a winter of wild weather. I should look that up.
What fun photos. I love the book cover, too!
I’m taking a sociology class at a local community college and we had to watch a Ted Talk this week about a young woman from Nigeria. As a child, she only had books with blue eyed white children who ate apples and had snow. She talks about her dark skin, eating mangoes, and no snow and how reading/hearing a single story doesn’t give us the whole picture. I’ve thought about that as you have posted the pictures of the books from your childhood. I’m so embarrassed to say that I never thought of it before. I am so enjoying your posts and the stories about your family.
I heard that talk! I loved it. We have to get all the way to “U” before we get to a story that features (or even includes) a brown skinned little girl and her family. White people and animals were the characters in the books in those days.
The picture of you and Pearl in the snow is very sweet. We had some snow when I was growing up – I can remember being pushed around on a bakelite tray which was a substitute for a sled – because snow was so rare we did not have any special clothes or toys for the snow.
It must have been fun even on a bakelite tray. My children who were born in the south and hadn’t seen snow were quite excited when we moved to Missouri and got our first real snow.
What beautiful memories always wonderful to have pictures to freshen those memories.
Portal
Yes it is. And they usually bring more memories.
I am loving your photos, stories, and the context of books for kids of the time. We had more snow than you. I loved playing in snow forts, sculpting the snow… now I have to drive up the mountain to see snow.
Now I am wondering where you grew up!
I grew up in Northeastern Indiana in a farming community. A place where all my ancestors seemed to arrive in the 1840s, after waiting in Ohio, on the way from Amish or anabaptist communities in Pennsylvania, for the parcels of land to become available. I was born in ’57 and the snows in the early 1960s were intense. I remember being “snowed in” on many occasions.
I grew up in Detroit and I remember big snows also. I later lived in Northwest Michigan, in Lake County and when we first moved there in 1986 the snows were heavy and the lake froze solid before Christmas. By the time we left in the early 2000s, the lake wasn’t freezing as soon. And the snows were melting and freezing and then more snow which was much worse for driving than just snow on top of snow.
In Detroit we were never snowed in and in Idlewild, we never were either because, at least when we got there, they had great county snow plows clearing the roads. We would have been if they hadn’t.
Love the snow pics and snowsuits worn… never did I see snow really until I was 19. I remember being out with the car and snow flurries started. I called and rather demanded that hubby come rescue me. No matter what he said, I was having not part in driving home. He came!
I hope you finally learned to drive in the flurries. 🙂
You look so enthralled by the snow and having a wonderful time. I remember my daughters having a similar look when they first saw snow in Europe..probably around the same age as you are here. I didn’t see snow at all until I was 25.
Except for the 14 years we were in the south, and now I guess we can make that 26 years in the south, we had lots of snow.