The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM T.
THE HOME FRONT A Hearty Vote For Winter By William E. Bohn Every Thursday afternoon, when I go to Pennsylvania Station and start the journey to my home in Delaware, I see long trains loading up...
...Nature had decreed a holiday...
...I wonder why Whittier never mentioned them in his careful account of the long white day...
...She had a luncheon on her schedule and at night was to make a speech in some town down-state...
...All this time, father would be holding in the prancing, pawing steed...
...The snow was the signal for the breaking of rules...
...It is a matter of self-confidence, of pride, of mastery over environment...
...A hundred years ago, that sober Quaker, Whittier, touched off my main point rather nicely...
...As soon as I withdrew, they came swooping down in flocks...
...By the time we reached the school, we had a long and colorful line...
...But whenever a deep snow fell, father turned gay and sportive...
...The whole crowd agreed with him—except me...
...If I insisted on going on my regular round, she would, of course, drive me to the station...
...From earliest morn, we were practically besieged by our winged neighbors...
...Within an hour we counted eight sorts of customers in our open-air restaurant: starlings, cardinals, white-throated sparrows, song sparrows, English sparrows, brown thrashers, crows and juncos...
...We could go over the Christmas cards again...
...The unusual whiteness and uniformity of the world furnished the only magic that could release them from their usual round of thoughts and work...
...Thus cut off from usual sights and sounds, the staid New Englanders gave themselves to a holiday of imagination and story-telling...
...Who wants to go to Florida...
...Anyone but an extra-pigheaded so-and-so would fall in with the mood...
...That day, we made the journey in style...
...The snow which fell last night added up to only nine inches, yet it was enough to transform our world...
...there must have been some feathered friends driven to his father's farmhouse by the rigors of the weather...
...A universe of sky and snow...
...We could look up some of the old books we had loved in childhood—especially Snowbound...
...We could devise unusual foods for lunch and dinner...
...We could call up the neighbors and tell them how wonderful it was...
...Every day, people are going there by the thousands...
...You can guess what I did...
...With a storm raging, however, she could not think of such things...
...Edith began eagerly to talk of breaking the day's engagements...
...The next house would add to the train...
...No cloud above, no earth below...
...The horse, too, seemed to enter into the spirit of the occasion...
...The minute we were ready, he was off, full-speed through the gate and into the road—with snow flying and bells jingling...
...After an extra good breakfast, we wrapped ourselves in extra warm coats and tucked the old buffalo robe tight about us...
...The other evening at a party, a husky young fellow proclaimed: "I'd be happy if I never had to see another snowflake in my life...
...But it also makes for dullness, for monotony, for avoidance of the occasional adventure...
...That's the way we went to school on a snowy day...
...My only feeble effort in the direction of sticking to the routine was going out to the garage and putting chains on the car...
...In ordinary weather we walked that mile with pleasure—amusing ourselves in countless ways...
...The birds remained close by to watch as I scattered grain and breadcrumbs...
...It did not take me long to get the snow swept away from two feeding-stations...
...Their colors had never seemed so bright or their movements so gay...
...And when the rosy-cheeked school-ma'am came out to welcome us, it was something to see and hear...
...Except for a few berries, every sort of natural food was covered deep...
...We were snowbound, with all the thrills that this old word implies...
...But the looks she gave me showed plainly enough that, if I insisted on the usual program, my name would be mud...
...THE HOME FRONT A Hearty Vote For Winter By William E. Bohn Every Thursday afternoon, when I go to Pennsylvania Station and start the journey to my home in Delaware, I see long trains loading up with passengers for the South...
...At the very first house, a couple of boys would come running with their sleds, so we had hitchhikers...
...We could play all the two-handed games we could think of...
...I invariably make my train for New York at 8:17 a.m...
...I am naturally a routineer...
...To me the memory of winter which stands out brightest is of going to school through the glistening white world...
...Except where a green tree broke through the design here and there, the universe was solid white below and gray above...
...I pride myself on the fact that I never let the weather interfere with an engagement...
...A horse was harnessed to the sleigh...
...But I knew perfectly well that I could never get a majority vote in favor of leaving the house...
...This was, of course, in Snowbound: "We looked upon a world unknown, On nothing we could call our own...
...And we, like Whittier, got to thinking of old times...
...But the chief entertainment was furnished by the birds...
...The little redbrick building was precisely a mile from our home...
...So, when I speak in defense of winter, I realize that I represent a tiny minority...
Vol. 37 • February 1954 • No. 5
