There’s not much news this week…late January seems to be a time that many of us just want to hibernate after the holidays. Even the stores are empty as people realize just how much they spent in December and decide to save some money for a change. In recent years, even in nice weather, children are busy indoors with their electronics: telephoning, twittering, texting, and playing with the computer. Years ago, when many mothers were home during the day instead of working outside the home, children were encouraged to go out and play even in the midst of winter.

In the 40s, 50s, and 60s the weather pattern was definitely colder. Snowfalls of a foot or more were a regular occurrence. Just as today, when the snowflakes started to fall, the children watched in fascination, especially if the storm began during a school day. But while today’s students are likely as not to show up at school in shorts and short-sleeved shirts in the midst of winter, school children then were bundled up tight against the cold. Have you ever seen the holiday classic movie, A Christmas Story? If so, you have some idea of the torture that children (and their parents) went through to prepare for going outside, even if you were just going to school on the bus. In the film, Ralphie and his kid brother were bundled up tight by their frazzled mother.

First, the children were dressed with warm (sometimes long) underwear. Then came the shirts and pants (if you were a girl, you often wore pants as well as a skirt or dress). Thena good, heavy sweater, and finally you donned your snow suit. Thesnow suit was so thick that it could almost stand upright even when there was no child inside. A scarf was wrapped around your neck and throat before the snowsuit jacket was zipped or snapped closed. Then it would become obvious that someone had forgotten to include mittens. Thejacket would come off and the search for the mittens would begin. Usually they were attached to a piece of cord or elastic that was long enough to reach from the bottom of one sleeve cuff, across the back or the neck, and down through the other sleeve so that the mittens or gloves dangled just below the hands. Themittens were fastened to the string or elastic with special snaps or large safety pins, the idea being that if they were fastened this way, no mittens would be lost. (A foolish hope on the part of the parents.) No sooner than it was finally time to put on the jacket again, the child would announce that they had to go to the bathroom and everything would have to be undone to allow the child to use the toilet.

At the end of a half hour (on a good day, and depending how many children there were to suit up,) it was time to send the kids out to play in the snow. Older kids would build snow forts and have huge snow ball battles, while the younger brothers and sisters would plead to be allowed to play or ask their siblings to take them for a ride on the wooden sleigh.

The South Shore has few hills for sledding, the best one locally being the Montauk Highway overpass of the Robert Moses Causeway. The problem there was the competition for space. Kids from Babylon and the surrounding areas battled with the kids from Islip to find a suitably snow-covered space. Then you had to worry that you couldn’t stop the sled fast enough to avoid the traffic on the causeway access roads. Add to that the lack of parking along the Causeway and you had to constantly try to avoid conflicts.

The area where large numbers of children did not cause a problem was skating on Argyle Lake. Most years, by the beginning of January, the lake and two of the nearby ponds were frozen. If we were lucky, the ice was nice and smooth. Tiny children generally used the small pond near the playground (usually referred to as the Duck Pond). Thislittle pond was the first to freeze and was shallow enough that even if a child fell through the ice they could be easily rescued.

The big lake however was another problem. Since my friends and I lived nearby and played at the lake year-round, we knew the areas where it was usually safe to skate. The east side of the lake was usually the least frozen, and it was considered a real treat if the lake was frozen enough for you to climb onto the Big Island (slightly east of the center of the lake) and the Little Island (in the northwest corner of the lake). Half the time, you could get to the Little Island, but getting to the Big Island was relatively rare. At one point in the late 50s, a pair of boys who lived nearby, tried to get to the Big Island and ended up stranded on a small floating piece of ice. While all on shore watched with bated breath, the Babylon Fire Department arrived with ladders and lines and began to make their way toward the boys. The crowd was so silent that you could hear both boys reciting the Lord’s Prayer from the shore. Therescue went well and everyone got home safely.

But Argyle Lake had numerous areas where the current hidden by the ice made the ice much more treacherous. Thiswas especially true alongside the Trolley Line Road section of the lake. One winter day, while crowds of people skated on the southwest section of the lake, five sisters unfamiliar with the currents, decided to make their way home and crossed the lake heading for Trolly Line Road. The ice gave way and all five sisters plunged into the freezing waters and disappeared beneath the ice. Only the oldest, 12-yearold, managed to find her way to the surface and was saved. In my lifetime, this is the greatest tragedy that the Village of Babylon has ever seen.

But whether it’s caused by global warming or a periodic shift in the weather, I can count on one hand the number of times Argyle Lake has frozen enough for skating in the past couple of decades. Snowfalls with significant accumulation have been relatively rare in the past twenty or thirty years. Both parents work, and children communicate with their friends electronically instead of playing together. It’s a new age, but I for one am delighted to have those happy memories of Babylon winters long ago.