Just some thoughts on our first chilly morning

Some of us old timers remember our parents talking about the winters when Long Island Sound froze over all the way to Connecticut. Even we remember the Shelter Island Ferry lanes being choked with ice and specifically on a New Year's Eve 20 or so years ago actually getting stuck in the ice and the other ferry nudging us through.

We guess that the LIRR's snow-train-engine-plow, that still sits near the railroad museum off 4th Street, fell into some non-use about the time the railroad turnabout ceased to be used otherwise we think that this plow would do absolutely no good running backwards all the way to Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn. We have to think that perhaps our grandparents were telling the truth when they had to walk barefoot to school, 5 miles each was uphill and in snow up to their fannies.
Frankly, we miss the idea of things being that cold and perhaps snowy so that this "Big Bertha" would have to lumber out and clear the tracks.  You know those mornings; so cold the snow crunches underfoot, the cat won't go out, fireplace smoke all grey and rope straight against that robin's egg blue sky...you know the ones?

I guess we can miss it when we don't have it and decry it when it shows up.....but that's pretty universal and isn't limited to snow and that first cold wind.