Snow day or no, I was expected to throw papers

Our society has slowly but surely gone pantywaist on us. My valiant stands against the tide haven’t helped a bit either.

I predicted it this past week, two days ahead, just from watching the weather reports. School delays or cancellations would be issued before the first snowflakes ever fell.

The school officials in my school days never canceled school based on what Dan True’s forecast said was going to happen. If they had done that we would have been out of school a lot more in the winter. No offense, Dan.

No, the superintendent had to get up and get out on the roads himself and actually end up needing assistance from a tractor to get a snow day. My mother drove one of those school buses charged with getting us to school safely and she never exuded a lot of confidence driving on slick roads in that great big long yellow bus. The good thing about her driving a bus in my grade school years was that we were among the first in the county to learn the superintendent had slid off the road that morning.

Back in the day, businesses sure didn’t close down for snow, even if school was closed. They were there cleaning off the sidewalks and throwing out rock salt.

They didn’t just clean off a path on the sidewalk, they cleared all the concrete surfaces in front of their store. The store owner knew that with school closed some folks had a day off and might be shopping as soon as the sun peeked out.

Last week businesses and offices took two-hour delays or took the day off. Before I’m called out here, I confess I did the same thing. Didn’t seem to make sense to have that college student on the front desk come in before anyone at the university. It’s not my job to build character, that’s what they have college professors for, right?

It’s not just the snow days that have been eating at my gut as far as the business world goes. These days holidays regularly get stretched to three- and four-day vacations.

The rule seems to be if a holiday falls Wednesday or later in the week it’s fair game to take the rest of the week. It’s not just the random employee or boss doing it, often it’s the whole business closed down.

I’m not going to gripe about folks taking coffee breaks and even leaving the office to grab the java, even though I never made a habit of it. What I will rave about, however, is the price they pay for the overly sweet milky stuff. My dad hit the coffee shop twice a day but they made it all in one pot and he drank it black.

I’ve gone on too long on this rant. After all when I started drinking coffee all those flavors hadn’t been invented. We didn’t have climate change back then, all we had were four seasons. Two of them were windy, one was hotter than Hades and the other was colder than a well-digger’s hind-end.

It never really mattered if we got a snow day from school. The newspaper’s circulation manager always expected me to show up and throw my papers that afternoon.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

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