New Year’s day dawned still and bright in Cheyenne, Wyoming. It was a beautiful morning and warmer than usual for January. By noon, the sky had clouded up, but no one paid any attention for the weatherman had predicted only light snow flurries. As the hours advanced through the day, it began to snow, a few flakes at a time, then harder and the sky grew darker.

By the next morning it was snowing hard and the wind was whipping it up. Through out the day it snowed and snowed and the wind continued to blow. The third day came and it still stormed. By now, cars were buried under the snow. Ten-foot drifts brought everything to a stand still. Nothing was moving except the government snowplows.

We were warm and cozy inside our home. There were others less fortunate. Dad climbed through the small front window and shoveled to keep a pathway cleared. Then Dick, my older brother,
would do the same thing a couple of hours later. I remembered it just snowed, snowed, and snowed, while Jack Frost made lovely patterns of ice on our window panes. Luckily the coal bin had just been filled. We had plenty of food as mom believed in keeping ahead. Whenever she shopped for groceries, she always bought two of everything. One we’d use, the other was an extra one. It was
her food storage over the years that made it easy to shop in much the same manner later when I got married.

It took several hours of digging to dig the cars out, with neighbor helping neighbor. We were finally able to go out and play, after being cooped in for seven days. We would sleigh ride down the drifts, build snow forts, and snowmen using one of dad’s caps and a carrot from mom’s fridge. A few pieces of coal from the coal bin made him some sparkling black eyes. But the most fun of all were the snowball fights with Dick and dad against us three kids, then came the hot chocolate that mom made.