Forty odd years ago I was in my forties and our family had just returned to the area from Cortland County after a three year hiatus. As I write this we are in the midst of one of the strangest weather patterns most people around today can remember. There is nothing so dear to an older person’s heart than recalling how tough they had it in the old days. It was the seventies and the snowmobile was pretty much perfected. The Old Forge area was in the midst of a burgeoning economic bonanza thanks to them and there was no shortage of snow to help fuel it.

Our home in Cortland County was located about opposite and to the west of the southern terminus of Skaneateles Lake near the hamlet of Sempronius. We lived on Iowa Road a short distance before its intersection with State Route 41A. The elevation of our house was the same as Old Forge Dam. Snow conditions were not too far removed from those we experienced in the Forge. We returned on June 1, 1970 and our home for the next sixteen years was on First Bisby Lake. I was the manager of the Adirondack League Club Lodge located there. We were located ten miles from the village at the end of a dirt road seven miles of which was private. Part of my job was keeping said road open.

Of snow we had a great plenty and cold as well. The first winter back here was one of the worst for snow. The winter of ‘71 was only topped for total inches by the winter of ‘77. We got 375 inches in ‘71 and 408 inches in ‘77 or in other words 31.25 feet and 34 feet respectively. I recall ‘71 more vividly than ‘77 for just one reason. I had very inadequate resources to keep the seven miles of road open and I was under the gun to get my three children back and forth to school.

The morning of March 5 it was snowing heavily and I started an hour early to get the children to school on time and based on the circumstances loaded them into the snowplow. We left the lodge at 6:30 a.m. and arrived at the gate at 8 a.m. school starting time. I was concerned about getting them to school on time because I was involved in litigation with the Town of Ohio school board that had refused to transport my children to school. I went into the gate house to use the phone to inform the school we would be a few minutes late and Principal John Leach told me that the school was closed for the day. I learned later that it was the first day in the history of the Town of Webb School that it was ever closed because of weather.

We started back home and had to plow our way. At 2:30 that afternoon a mile and a half from the lodge I could go no further. I left the children in the truck and walked in snow up to my chest into the Lodge where I had a small 420 John Deere dozer. I fired up the dozer and with my good wife standing on the trailer hitch plowed out to the truck. We hooked the truck to the dozer and with my wife steering got back into the lodge around four in the afternoon.

Edgar Nadeau, a local logger friend, was carrying on a logging operation about three miles from the gate and he called me two days later to learn how we were and to ask if I was able to continue plowing. I was not because of narrow banks along the road so he told me; I will be there at noon tomorrow to get you through to the bridge over the Moose River with your plow. True to his word he rolled over the hill at the lodge at noon where my wife had a good hot lunch ready for him and his two workmen.

After lunch he hooked a log skidder to the front of my old plow and with another skidder and a dozer preceding us we started for the bridge. I steered and drove the plow while John (Dutch) Hurlbut operated the wing on the plow. My 13-year-old son took up the rear with our snowmobile and we returned home on it. I had plowed the yard the morning before starting to school and I measured fifty-three inches when it finally let up that evening. From that time on our only access to town until May 24, was by snowmobile. The month of March that year posted a total of 110 inches. The snowmobiling was excellent up to and through the Easter holiday. From 1968 through this winter so far that is nearly double any March since. And our area is no slouch as far as winter temperatures go. In 1980 we tied Stillwater, N.Y. for minus 52.

Subsequent years proved every bit as challenging but I was better prepared and the kids never missed a day of school in all the time we lived there. Interestingly the vehicle that the Poland School sent to pick the children up at the end of the town road at the gate could not make it there through the snow for the first seven of the nine days before they quit trying. I did prevail with my lawsuit and was paid to transport the children and my actions set precedence in New York education law. New Yorkers and school children in other states should not have to fight to get their children to school.

The thought for the week is a quote by Cal Thomas, columnist: “Our success as a nation and as families depends less on what happens in the White House than on what happens in our own homes.”