Cold Weather

When I was a girl, I had to dress like a girl to go to school. Almost every girl wore skirts or dresses to school. We wore slips and crinolines under our skirts and dresses. We wore coats that were as long as our skirts. We thought only boys wore pants and jackets to school.

You can imagine how cold my legs got in the winter. The wind would come right up under the skirt and slip I wore. I usually had socks to my knees, but my knees and up were just skin. So when it got really really cold, Mother let me wear my flannel-lined blue jeans under my skirt to school. When I got to school I would take them off and hang them in the cloak room with my coat. Most of the girls did the same. Sometimes we had coats with matching pants. The pants went on the outside of your clothes. You had to stuff your skirt down in the pants to wear them and this was very uncomfortable.

We wore rubber boots over our shoes in the winter. When we got to school, we had to pull those boots off – they always stuck at the heel – and we lined them up in the hall outside the classroom door. The school always had a particular winter smell from coats and boots.

I rode a school bus to school. Remember that steep hill in front of our house? The road came up from the valley and made a big turn just beyond our yard. This turn was slippery and treacherous in the winter. People were always sliding off the road there. Often they would get out of their car and climb up to our house to knock on our door and ask to use our phone to call for help. The school bus had to come up that steep hill and around that turn. If the roads were bad, we’d watch for the bus. It would rev its engine and charge up the hill. Wheels would spin! The motor would roar. Sometimes the whole bus would slide backwards. If the bus couldn't make it up the hill, I didn’t have to go to school!

I felt sorry for the kids who lived close to school. They always had to go to school. Only the kids who lived out in the valley like me got to have snow days. On snow days I didn’t have to wear a school dress. I could wear snow pants and a snow jacket and play outside in the snow.