Some of us old timers remember our parents talking about
the winters when Long Island Sound froze over all the way to Connecticut. Even
we remember the Shelter Island Ferry lanes being choked with ice and
specifically on a New Year's Eve 20 or so years ago actually getting stuck in
the ice and the other ferry nudging us through.
We guess that the LIRR’s (Long Island Railroad) snow-train-engine-plow,
a tool that still sits near the Railroad Museum off 4th Street, fell
into some non-use about the time the railroad turnabout (a turnabout is a big
ring in the ground – like a clock dial and they drove the engine onto it, and
it spun around so the engine was facing back from where it came) just became a
bystander.
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| the roundabout |
The end of the main line of the LIRR was built and opened
about 170 years ago and ran from Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn to the railroad
pier in Greenport. It is about 100
miles. Back then, so the locals say and the books recount, the winters were
pretty bad and perhaps our grandparents were telling the truth when they say
they had to walk barefoot to school 5 miles each way, all uphill both
directions, with snow up to their fannies.
After a long hot summer, we miss the idea of being cold
and perhaps snowy; weather so bad that this “Big Bertha” would have to lumber
our and clear the tracks. You know those
mornings; so cold that the snow crunches underfoot, the cat won’t go out for
love nor money, fireplace smoke all grey and rope straight against the blue…
you know the ones?
It is just the end of summer with a morning in the 40s
and fall clearly in the air. Winter is waiting around the corner. Just waiting to pounce. I guess we can miss it when we don’t have it
and decry it when it shows up.
That is, however, pretty universal and not limited to
snow and that first cold wind.