Bytes from the Bean by Joe Manning 12-01-01

12:00AM / Saturday, December 01, 2001

SETTLING IN

It Used To Snow

a poem by Joe Manning

It used to snow

when we were kids

all day, waist deep, pure white

It would start with a few flakes

here and there

and grow into a windy swirl

When I saw you

for the first time in forty years

I remembered the snow

You waiting at the top of the hill

my eyes fixed on yours

as I pulled the sled behind me

-from Disappearing Into North Adams




Southview Cemetery, March 1997

I grew up in the little southern Maryland town of Solomons Island, where the summers are hot and the winters are mild. On a cloudy Friday morning in February of 1958, my eleventh-grade English teacher gave us an assignment for the weekend. We had to read and report on a long poem by John Greenleaf Whittier. When I rode that yellow bus home late in the afternoon, I had no idea that a magical nine-day vacation awaited me.

I woke up to an unlikely snowstorm Saturday morning. By the time it ended that night, we had ten inches! In Chesapeake Bay country, ten inches may as well be ten feet. My father got our dusty sleds out of the attic, and my brother and I spent the whole day outside except for lunch, two stops for hot chocolate, and one change of clothes. Early Monday morning, the man on WBAL in Baltimore announced that classes at Calvert County High School would be cancelled for the entire week. I had so much fun for the next seven days, that I never found time to read that poem for English class. Nor did any of my classmates. The poem was called Snowbound.




Joe Wolfe Field, February 1997

It is December now, and it is time to settle in. The long gray winter is about to blanket the baseball fields of our lives for one more season. But for New Englanders, it’s a chance to show our stuff. Amid plowed-up snow banks along steep roads, huge piles of firewood, and heavy, pungent clouds of smoke in the January air are rugged folks who do not turn their backs to the cold north wind.

“The Freeman playground was right across the street. When we were young, that’s where we played every day. Kids today, they’d balk at it I’m sure, but in the winter, we’d go over and shovel the snow, get a leather ball which absorbed the water nice and heavy, and we played basketball all day in the cold weather.”

-Silvio Lamarre, from Steeples

“I would walk from Daniels Road down to Houghton School on Union Street. To my estimation, it was a mile, but it seemed a lot longer. At that time, we didn’t have very many automobiles around, so they didn’t close school when there was a snowstorm. When it snowed, we took a sled down to school. My great-grandmother lived halfway, so we would always stop there and have hot chocolate.”

-Marjorie Rynkowski, from Steeples

I love the winters in North Adams. Oh, I may linger a little longer in the morning in the warm shelter of the Bean, but with a fur hat and plenty of layers of clothing, I look forward to long walks in these hills. The bare trees create new vistas, and the snow paints strange new patterns on familiar landscapes. After a storm, the walls and monuments at Hillside Cemetery look like some mysterious archaeological wonder.




Hillside Cemetery, February 1999

One of my favorite places to take photographs in the winter is MASS MoCA. If you look carefully for them, the colorful industrial objects that are abundant in the courtyards contrast beautifully with the drifting snow. They are anonymous works of accidental art that fit comfortably in their new cultural home.



MASS MoCA, February 2000

The winter also rekindles nostalgia for the little things that we remember when we get older. What was once a symbol of struggle now seems like a charming relic of the past.

“When they had a snowstorm, the trolleys had kind of a plow on the front end. So there would be a pile of snow on the sides of the track. They’d put calls out from the city hall for people who were in dire need of some money, and they would pay them fifty cents an hour to shovel the snow into a horse-drawn vehicle. They would take it over to the riverbank and dump it in the river.”

-Lucien Siciliano, from Steeples

When that first storm of winter sneaks over the mountains and drops fresh white snow in the valley, we long for the simpler days of our childhood when sliding down a hill was all the entertainment we needed to take us from Saturday morning to Sunday night.

“It was great growing up on East Main. In the wintertime, it was wonderful. We could slide down the hill and never have any problems with cars.”

-Mary Ann Abuisi, from Disappearing Into North Adams

“We’d go up to the ledge. In the winter, we’d go sliding every day after school. We’d get up to the top of Reservoir Road, right under the ledge, and slide all the way down to the railroad tracks. The big boys on Furnace Street built this big bobsled that you could get six guys on. They’d give us rides sometimes.”

-Rosalie Cancro Morgan, from Disappearing Into North Adams

“We could slide like crazy. There were no cars. I could go on my sled straight down all the way across Union Street to the riverbank. Of course, my mother never knew that, but I did it just the same. The runners would crackle like crazy when you crossed the trolley car tracks. The only thing was, you had to pull the sled all the way back up.”

-Helen LeBeau, from Disappearing Into North Adams

As we get ready for another winter in the Berkshires, we should be careful not to settle in too deeply. Let’s get out and enjoy it. On this week after Thanksgiving, I am thankful for God’s great gift of the seasons.

“I love it in the winter right after a big snowfall, when the snow is stuck to the branches, and the sun is shining through. It looks so peaceful. It’s hard for people to realize how beautiful it is here, especially if they never leave.”

-Kristen Cummings, from Disappearing Into North Adams

By the way, I finally completed that homework assignment for English class back in 1958. I read Snowbound, and here are my favorite excerpts:

The sun that brief December day

Rose cheerless over hills of gray.

And, darkly circled, gave at noon

A sadder light than waning moon.

Slow tracing down the thickening sky

Its mute and ominous prophecy

A portent seeming less than threat,

It sank from sight before it set.

Unwarmed by any sunset light,

The gray day darkened into night,

A night made hoary with the swarm

And whirl-dance of the blinding storm,

As zigzag, wavering to and fro,

Crossed and re-crossed the winged snow,

And ere the early bedtime came

The white drift piled the window frame.

And through the glass the clothesline posts

Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.

The old familiar sights of ours

Took marvelous shapes; strange domes and towers.

Visit Joe's website at: www.sevensteeples.com.

Email Joe at: manningfamily@rcn.com