When I was about 3 or 4 years old, we lived in Newfoundland. It snowed all the time there. In fact, some days, it was hard to tell where the horizon ended and the sky began because the ground was white and so was the sky, except in the summer whern there were some green things, but even the beach was grey and rocky, like a rainy day.

Jimmy Noland was my best friend. Jimmy Nolland. Not Jimmy. Not Jim. Jimmy Nolland. Always both names. He was already a wild man at 3 or 4. We clomped around the hard wood floors on the pier and beam foundations of the officer's quarters off base called Silver's Acres like we were real cowboys making lots of boy noises. We usually started the day together at my house, followed by a turn at the Nolland house. A few days of that indoor rotation during the cold and dark winter and the Moms were tired enough to give into our pleas to "let us go outside!" Usually the yard was covered with snow of course, but Dad built an elevated platform that we could sweep clean for our outside clomping. The yard was fenced, the neighborhood safe and the kitchen window was right above the platform so Mom could dash indoors for a minute at a time to stay warm and still monitor our activities if she wanted.

But, then as they used to say, "with Jimmy Nolland it only takes a minute." Jimmy Nolland. You know.

So, despite being bundled up like michelin men with full body snow suits over jeans over long underwear over whatever else, and despite Mom's careful warnings before going out doors ("be sure to use the bathroom before getting bundled up"), we always felt the need to mark our spot in the play yard if given the opportunity.

And Jimmy Nolland needed only the one minute to qualify as "opportunity."

This time, it happened when Mom stepped inside to get hot chocolate. In a heartbeat Jimmy Nolland stipped himself of all the "unnecessaries" and begin the process of making yellow snow.

Okay, it was a group thing. But he thought of it. I think.

Anyway, Mom rolled her eyes in circles that could have seeded the low hanging clouds as she came out the door in time to see two boys making melted snow circles and laughing--parka's and snowsuits on the ground.

That's the Mom who had no brothers and wore white gloves to tea parties in Jackson just before moving to Newfoundland to live over the "Red Rose," an establishment that stored its "cold drinks" in the window rather than in an ice box.

But that's another story.