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By Bill Van Tassel
TURNER — Rapidly approaching 67, I have reached the point where I just tolerate Maine snow. Having spent my first 21 years growing up in the mid-Atlantic states, I think the aspect of tolerance is laudable in my case.
I came to Maine in the summer of 1971 to teach tennis at a boys’ camp in Harmony; a city boy from New Jersey thrown into one of the state’s smallest towns with chipmunks, loons, deer, and moose – and the ever-popular black flies. The campers were the customary assortment of rich kids from New York City, Long Island, South Eastern Connecticut, and a few foreign countries.
A couple of things happened that summer that supported a decision to move to Maine when a job opportunity presented itself the following year. First, the weather was as perfect as the air was clean. A sufficient amount of rain fell, but at night, leaving the daylight hours free for a great camp experience. Nothing can beat sleeping in an open cabin under blankets during a chilly August night.
I was used to sweating nightly through a South Jersey summer in a flat-roofed home with no air conditioning. I thought if this is how Maine weather behaves, count me in.
Secondly, our water ski instructor and photographer had visited the camp Wild Goose, the previous winter and had taken some color slides of the plentiful snowfall that season. He had to snowshoe in on the camp road to make it to the main house (the Castle) and the cabins bordering the cove on Great Moose Lake. The drifts were up to and over the eaves of the “Castle.”
During one of the very few rainy days, Dave showed his photographs on the big screen in the barn loft. I was much impressed and excited thinking about the terrific things one could do in all that snow. Remember, I was only 21; a baby boomer from away no less.
So, with those two things in mind, I took a teaching job in Turner, Maine. Shortly thereafter I was engaged to a wonderful girl from Rumford. She took me on my first downhill ski outing, to Sunday River in Newry. It was icy, but being athletic by nature, I had a great first run down the beginner’s slope. However, I fell while making a not-too-graceful stop and broke, of all things, my thumb.
So, I learned early on that snow, like anything in nature, is not always user friendly. Later in life, the snow would cause my car to drift into oncoming traffic and put me in the hospital for six weeks. I’m not sure what that lesson was, but it sure hurt!
That wonderful woman from Rumford soon became my wife. I never saw anyone get so excited with every season’s first snowfall. I was going to write winter’s first snowfall, but I know better now!
Even into her 30s and 40s she remained excited about the change in season that caused every ugly, gray thing of late autumn to become beautiful again. Had cancer not taken her away too soon, she’d yet be making snow angels at age 63, and probably still enjoying shoveling the stuff. She had even asked one Christmas for a snow shovel.
So, now I’m just tolerating the stuff. Fortunately, there are other aspects of my life in Maine, that keep me from desiring warmer climates.
The snowbird life of Florida’s retirement community has no attraction for me. Florida is so crowded now. I’ve recently met snowbirds who are not migrating there in winter anymore because they’re fed up with the traffic. Who would have thought there’d ever be much traffic in a swamp?
I have a vehicle with all-wheel drive, heated seats and a remote starter that I had put in immediately. I use studded snow tires. Someone else is hired to clean out my driveway now, although I still do some shoveling if it’s absolutely necessary.
I have to don the snow shoes to keep a path to the wood pile navigable and finally bought a roof rake two winters ago. I ponder whether going up on the roof to clean the chimney is still a good idea.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. There was one fantastic benefit of a good snowfall for an elementary school teacher. There aren’t too many more-welcomed early-morning phone calls one can get than the message, “Bill, no school today.”
That call always seemed to come on the right day, and there was never a day that it happened that wasn’t the right day. I’d hang up the phone, lay there with eyes shut, feel the weight of a hundred sloppy plan books leave my body, and let my newly lightened head sink into the pillow for several, heavenly minutes of pleasant slumber, then, maybe go skiing!
I admit there are occasions when I think, “How long am I going to be able to deal with this?” I have a couple aces in the hole as two of my sons live nearby. Their families also present me with the best reason to remain in snow country – grandchildren. Of, course the kids love the snow and have already started skiing as toddlers, but what do they know.
Do I want to move back to New Jersey? Well, let me answer that with a quote from Woody Allen. The New York comedian quips in the movie, “Sleeper,” “I’m what you’d call an existential atheist. I believe there’s an intelligence in [every part of] the universe, except for certain parts of New Jersey.”
Does that answer the question?
Come on winter! Give me your best shot.
Note: Writer Bill Van Tassel is a true Boomer. His future father, Edward, returned from WW II service in the Pacific Theater on the Naval aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Bataan. William was born in 1950, the second son of three. Van Tassel was hired by Turner Publishing in 2001 following a 29-year career as an elementary school teacher in Turner, Maine. A writer/photographer, he is a widower with three sons, a daughter and nine grandchildren, located from Maine to Pennsylvania. He has earned Art Education certification and has put his special photography interests to use in several venues during the last 30 years.
