Six more weeks! No matter what the ground hog predicts today, in six more weeks we can expect it to be spring. But we haven't really had much of a winter so far. I know I am borrowing trouble to say that. I can remember some March snowstorms that were as bad as any I have ever seen. Well, I think I must take that back. The snowstorms of my childhood were pretty terrific.

Is it faulty memory, or were there really many more snowy days in the few years back to my childhood? It seems to me that I walked to school in snow many days, only to hurry home so that we could go sledding until it got dark.

When I was a child we always lived in Washington, D.C., in the winters.

Perhaps there was more snow there, near the Tidal Basin and not too far from the ocean. I can remember ice skating on the Lincoln Memorial Reflection Pool at night. We also ice skated on Rock Creek near our home. Once there was such a covering of ice everywhere that we ice skated up 48th Street to our friend's house.

I suppose these were all isolated incidents and not the normal weather patterns, but they certainly are firm memories for me.

After I was grown and was living in Missouri in the winter time there were not too many times that it got cold enough to skate on a farm pond. Our present pond is deep enough that there needs to be a prolonged cold spell before it would be safe to skate on it. There have been a few times when that has happened, but somehow I don't have the urge to ice skate as much as I once did.

I never was very good at ice-skating. My ankles would give up after awhile and the skates would get wobbly and cause me to fall. I was much better on roller skates.

Our children, who attended Nash School here in Vernon County with Helen Gast as their teacher, remember times when there was enough snow for them to play fox and geese in the snow. I am glad they had that opportunity because it was one of our favorite things to do on snowy days.

I said one of our favorite things because the most favorite was sledding.

We were fortunate to have hills nearby and could really get up speed lying one or two deep on a sled. I think one of the reasons I loved it so much was that this one of the times when my brothers liked to have me along. I was small enough that I could add the third layer on the Flexy Sled, which added weight and caused it to go even faster.

There was no supervision in the nearby park where the neighborhood kids congregated for sledding, so no one told us this was risky business.

We never got hurt and the only discomfort I remember experiencing was with my fingers.

There was a drinking fountain at the park, which surprisingly was still running in the winter. When my fingers got really cold one day, I was told that it would make them feel better to put them in the water. (Some misguided child had heard that as a treatment for chilblains, but didn't realize it didn't help when you were still out in the cold) I think I went home crying that day.

These are fun memories but I will still look forward to the coming of spring, even if we don't have any real winter before then.