Frozen Memories

Today's relatively cold weather (17 degrees this morning) makes Horbrastar reminsce about boyhood winters familiar to to most of us northerners:

... all those afternoons we would come home from school in January or February and take our sleds over to Washington Park and sled until our mittens were snowcrusted and our ears fell off. Go home for dinner, painfully warm our ears, and then go back to the toboggan slide in the evening.

I remember once going to play hockey on a frozen creek on a Saturday when the temperature was ten below at midday; we were so layered with polypropylene underwear and sweatshirts that we could hardly move.

By the creek found a poor stray cat sitting in the crook of a willow tree, solid as a brick, frozen fast to the branch, as if the White Witch had passed by.