William Penn Elementary School - Winter

 As previously mentioned, my family lived in Minneapolis, MN, during my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades and I attended William Penn Elementary School. We had moved there during my 1st grade year from Kansas City, Kansas.

One of my first memories of winter was seeing kids ice skating on ice rinks in their back yard! What?! I had never seen anyone ice skate much less in their back yard.

In second grade I got ice skates for Christmas! I was so excited and promptly learned how to make a pom-pom out of yard to tie on them. If you don't know, you get a circle of cardboard, cut out a center hole, and wrap yarn inside out and around and around. When you have it as thick as it can get through the hole, thread a different yarn thread inside and around and tie it loosely. Cut around the outside edge, pull the tie tight now and make a knot! Fluff and there you go! All the girls had white skates with pom-poms. Boys had the black hockey skakes.

My Dad got into the making an ice rink in our back yard in a big way!! He used a huge piece of black plastic and laid it over the grass in our backyard. My brother Tim and I helped mound snow around the edges. Daddy would go out at night with the hose and flood our little rink. The ice would build up night after night and then it was ready for us! Tim and I had so much fun skating every day after school. If it snowed we had to shovel it off. After a week or so of skating  Daddy would lay another layer of ice. I can remember the feel my cold toes and nose and the sheer joy of ice skating. Yes, that is me in the picture below. I can't see any pom-poms on my skates just those on the ties for the hat I was wearing. Can you tell that I had braids? Mom would do little French braids near my face that went into regular braids. That has to be my very favorite hair style of my youth!!

I wrote before about Itchy Leggins and Kickerinos. Tim had snow boots, those black things with the multiple buckles and they were fairly tall - but they were overshoes. I had Kickerinos; they were worn like shoes with a warm fuzzy lining.  My feet got really hot during the school day! 

We walked to school with our friends who lived on our block. I was amazed at the snow that would get piled up between the sidewalk and the street. It was often much taller than I was and the teachers would warn us all the time to not walk up there! One Winter a crossing guard was hit by a car during bad weather - sleety slick roads. Her name was Diana Mooseman and we all said a prayer for her in our class. She was badly hurt - the car (maybe even a taxi?) pushed her into a store at the corner. She was older than I was, a 6th grader. I don't ever remember getting a ride to school. Mom did have a car, a Nash Rambler, and my Dad had a company car, a Chevy, since he worked for General Motors selling car parts.

Besides the rink at home we would sometimes get to go to the outdoor rink at Fowell Park with my older sister Martha. There was a warming shack were you could get warm around a fire in a barrel and buy hot chocolate. There was also a hockey rink but I stayed away from that after I saw blood on the ice! The park played music out of big speakers, much like an indoor roller rink. 

Years later we went ice skating with our kids and even took our Brazilian exchange student, Bernardo Telles. We skated at Queeny Park Rink in Manchester, MO.