Some Observations from the Hill

By HH (Hub) Brown of Owego

Thinking back, I like to compare the start of this winter with the one of I think it was '34 -'35. Some old-timers used to say, "Snow that comes on mud will not stay," meaning that if the ground wasn't frozen, the snow would disappear. That year, it started snowing before the 15th of November and it seemed as though it snowed a little every night. That may be a little strong but I remember on the hill roads I had to use chains. I worked nights then, and the main roads would be nearly clear. But every night I would stop under the last light on Main Street near Asa Davis' cow barn and drape the chains over the back wheels, get in, and drive up the hill. Going to work in the afternoon, I'd stop at about the same place, unhook the outside fastener, peel the chain off as far as it would go, get back in the car, go ahead til the chains fell off, pick up the chains, and go to work.

Some time before this, someone had stocked the hill with bobwhite quail. Because of the scarcity of people and thus, the low number of cats on the hill, it was a great place for birds. The summer before all the snow, it was common to see mother quail with a good sized brood of young. Bobwhite was a common sound that summer. But because of quail's habit of plunging into the side of a snowbank to spend the night, the steady snowfall must have done away with most of them for the next summer we only heard bobwhite once or twice.

When we first moved on the hill, if we got a big snowstorm we had to digest it the best way we could. They would plow to the foot of School House Hill, if there weren't too much snow, butt would just look at the drifts on up Lisle or up Gary Hunt Road and shake their heads and go back to town.

But things had changed. Someone must have thought that the people living on the hills needed a break for they bought two big Walter's Sno-Fighters, big trucks with huge V plows. The only trouble was that if it came to a place where the snow was drifted and hard on both sides there was no place to push it. There was just such a place near the top of School House Hill. On the one side, there were some big maples and evergreens in the little Bradt cemetery and right opposite was the schoolhouse, Lisle Road University as Billy Welch used to call it. Early on a Sunday morning, I heard the pung, pung of someone in rubber boots running up the road, or where the road would be after it was plowed out. It was Ted Bennett who lived in a house at the top of the hill. He was all out of breath, and the men on the plow needed two guys with scoop shovels to help the plow. Seemed when they got into real deep snow, some of it would fall over the top of the plow back in the road. They asked us if we would wait til the snow started falling over the top of the blade then jump on and throw off that piled up snow and then they would let the truck drift down the hill a little and then ram the drift again. Finally by doing this they got out of the cut and were able to go on their own.