My Backyard

By Ken McGill, Registrar of Voters

City of Pawtucket 

It’s 1:25 p.m. Friday afternoon and the weather bug on my computer say’s its 23 degrees Fahrenheit – winter is here. I was still wearing my light coat up until a week ago. The season changes so fast here in Pawtucket and as far as I’m concerned the change to winter is the worst. Give me an 80-degree day and I’m a happy person. I bet you have guessed – I hate winter!

It wasn’t always that way, as a kid I loved winter. I loved to go sledding down Japonica Street hill toward the river (what were we nuts!). I loved to go, on rare occasions, with friends to the Pawtucket Country Club and slide down their hill. I loved to build snowmen and snow forts and I couldn’t wait to be the first one out of the house after a snowstorm to walk down Woodbine Street.

I think my dislike of snow happened with the Blizzard of ’78. I was a sophomore at Tolman High School and I can remember getting out of school at 2:10 p.m. and walking home, down Broadway, and having the snow hit me in the face. It was the kind of snow that hurt and stung you in the face as you walked. Later in the day, as everyone was beginning to realize that it was going to be a bad storm, my father and I help my sister push her car into the Winters School parking lot. It was a mess and it was only going to get worse.

Three days later the snow finally stopped and yes, I was the first to attempt to walk down Woodbine Street. We lived in a tenement that was three houses down from the Winters School back schoolyard. The schoolyard was normally surrounded by a four-foot chain link fence but not on this day, as I stood in the snow I was actually above the fence. As a matter of fact it looked like there were no cars on the street but they were there and I was above them.

During that time I was a paperboy for the morning Journal. I covered all of Pleasant View and would ride my bike from street to street-delivering papers. Of course, because of the amount of snow that we had, the big, red Journal trucks could not deliver the newspapers to my house so I was unable to make my deliveries. It took about two weeks before paper deliveries started again and I can always remember one of my customers calling, after about one week, and complaining that they had not been getting their paper. I guess they hadn’t looked out the window.

The Blizzard of ’78 was pretty impressive and a lot of fun, but that winter was so miserable I am sure it is where my hate of winter began. I’ve told my kids the story of the Blizzard of ’78 and they say that it sounded fun and wish they could have experienced it. I hope I never experience it again, as a matter of fact, if it never snows again I will be happy.

For now I can only dream of the coming spring, with its flowers and sunshine, our annual trip to Florida in March and the 3^rd of July fireworks at McCoy. Winters are long in Pawtucket and that is why snow, cold and miserable weather will always be part of – Pawtucket Your Hometown. Stay warm everyone!

-           Until next week.