Snow

 Sunday it started snowing in Tennessee.

This is always dramatic and adventuresome.  Everywhere that I have lived the first snow of the year is hard on drivers, lots of accidents!  The first year that I started driving I was driving a red Volkswagen Beetle from the 60's, this was in 1974.  The first snow of the year my brother, sister and Exchange student from the Philipines, Jun were all freezing together in the car on the way to school.  About a mile and a half from home on M-19 I shifted gears and the car started spinning in circles, which completely surprised and scared all of us.  The car had one snow tire on the rear and we hit a patch of ice.  It felt like it would never stop spinning, it was like a ride at the county fair.  When it finally did we were almost in a neighor's field. Everybody but me got out and pushed us back on to the road and we went to school.

My dad was an inventor, always making stuff in his tool shed.  When my brother and I were pretty young he built a snowmobile.  The track was from an old manure spreader, the engine was from a garden tractor and everything else he welded steel and used wood and sheet metal to make the skis.  It worked pretty good but was really heavy and the track flew apart occasionally.  It pulled a toboggan well and you could skijor on snowskis with a water ski tow rope.Winter was full of fun adventures and it stayed snowy and cold for more than three days unlike Tennessee.  More stories to come!