Snow Stories— Two Broken Bones, a Close Call with a Horse, and a Tulip Snow

We just got our first snow this week, a few inches of pretty, fluffy snow. Living in eastern Pennsylvania, we can usually expect a few measurable snowfalls each winter, nothing too serious. But there’s always the chance of something more exciting happening when there’s snow, such as the winter both my brother and I had broken bones, or the time I nearly got trampled by a horse on a snowy back road on my way to church.

My brother had the first broken bone. After school one day, he and the other boys were taking turns sliding on an iced-over patch of blacktop while waiting on the bus.

Kenny fell down on the ice and landed on his wrist. He got on the school bus with the rest of us, but cradled his arm during the ride home, complaining about the pain. By the time we got to our house, his wrist was swelled.

Mom took Kenny to the doctor’s office across the street from us. When she cautioned my brother to watch out for traffic as they crossed the road, he said, “Right now, my wrist hurts so much I don’t care if a car hits me.”

In the waiting room, Mom questioned Kenny about the ice that had caused the fall. “We put water on it at recess so it would be more slippery,” he said.

“Who’s idea was that?”

Kenny hung his head. “Mine.”

Mom and Kenny returned home much later. His left arm was encased in a dark purple cast that we drew pictures and wrote our names on. Kenny is left-handed, so he was forced to learn to write with his right hand.

Several weeks later, I was swinging on our swing set at home. My gloves were wet and I lost my grip on the chains, fell backwards off the swing, and landed on my shoulder on a patch of icy snow and screamed for help.

Mom took me to the doctor’s office and an X-ray confirmed my upper right arm was broken.

“I can’t put it in a cast,” the doctor explained, “The break is up so high I’d have to put you in a body cast.” Instead, the doctor tightly wrapped my arm to my chest with an Ace bandage, and I wore a sling on my lower arm.

At home, I was relieved that I could still draw with my right hand.

With both of us having broken bones, Mom saved time by taking Kenny and I to the bone specialist in Lancaster city for check-ups together.

“How many children do you have?” laughed the nurses at the specialist’s office. “Keep ’em coming!”

Kenny and I both healed just fine, and there were no more broken bones that winter.

Several years later, my younger brother Andrew and I went sledding at my cousins’ farm on a snowy winter day.

At first, we sledded on a small hill in a cornfield. But it soon got boring. “Let’s go to the creek,” suggested my cousin.

The creek had a steep stoop leading down to the bank. There were brown tufts of unknown vegetation and rocks sticking up through the snow. (Later, I would learn my uncle and aunt had forbidden their children to sled there.)

I went down the hill first. I didn’t get far. I hit the mysterious vegetation, fell off the sled, and skidded to a stop on the brown tufts. My leg was red and bleeding and I started crying. That was the end of sledding on the farm for us. At least I didn’t land in the creek!

Sledding in the snow is one thing. Riding a bicycle is another. Since our family was horse-and-buggy Mennonite when I was growing up, sometimes we had to use our bikes even in snowy weather.

When I was about fifteen, I rode my bicycle to church alone one Sunday morning when the back roads were covered with fresh, packed-down snow. I was coasting down a hill when I heard a buggy behind me. Just then, my road bike tires went sideways on the slick road, and me and the bicycle went down.

I landed on my side on the road and looked up to see the buggy bearing down on me, horse hooves pounding. There was no time to lose if I didn’t want to get trampled. I got up and grabbed my bike, and scrambled to the side of the road as fast as I could, all while wearing my church shoes and nylons.

I was uninjured, and biked the rest of the way to church. I don’t think I even got runs in my nylons.

We drive cars now. Still, snow stories happen. One year, when my brother Andrew ran his first marathon, we had a freak April snowstorm and he had to run twenty-six miles, slipping and sliding in the snow. “One guy was running barefoot!” Andrew told us in disbelief later on.

Andrew got blisters from his wet shoes. Maybe the barefoot guy was on to something.

The weather forecasters are predicting 60 degrees this weekend. I don’t mind a bit.