I walked to school uphill BOTH ways. How, you ask? Well – please peruse the walking lines on the attached map. I lived in Highland, Illinois – a small town about 30 miles east of St. Louis, MO. (Population 5,000). There was one elementary school, and one high school. They sat next to one another in those days, even sharing the cafeteria. From first grade on, my sister and I walked both ways to school, every day, unless it was pouring rain.
See the creek? That blue line the arrows point out? Well, that creek was a low point between our house and the school. In the morning, you walked over to one of the roads which would cross the creek, then DOWN to the creek, across the bridge, then back UP to the school. In the evening, you reversed your trip.
How steep were the hills? Well, even when I rode my bicycle to school, I couldn’t pedal all the way to the top in either direction. Of course, I was too cool to ride a bike in High School – so maybe I could have done it by then.
How far was it? Well, I Google Mapped it, and was surprised to find it was only .6 miles, which is why there were no buses. I remembered it as much, much farther than that. But perhaps with the legs of a 6 or 8 or 10 year old carrying books, it was.
I bring this up primarily because today was yet ANOTHER day when complaints about “why is school open” sprang up when barely an inch of snow fell. In my day, we MIGHT have missed school with 12-18” of snow, but only if the buses with kids from the surrounding towns couldn’t get through, and we still walked uphill both ways.
Snowflakes….and I do mean that in the most obvious way.