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MU students ride bikes,
often their only transportation, year-round. Photo by Rob
Hill
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Winter
Fun
@Mizzou readers describe wacky
winter weather memories during college …
I remember one year sunbathing
on the porch roof of my sorority house on Feb. 20th. It seems
too impossible now that I live in Wisconsin where it may not
be warm enough to be outside without a coat until JUNE!!!
– Mildred (Midge) Wheeler,
BS HE ’77
When finals week still came after Christmas
break, my fiancée and I entertained ourselves with a new
pastime in an attempt to relieve the stress of the week. Since
he was one of the lucky few to have a car on campus, we would
drive to the river, jump up and down on the ice pushed up against
the bank and then quickly jump off before the ice started floating
away. Launching a new iceberg was one of our favorite ways of
coping with finals week.
Please don’t tell our granddaughters
about this!
– Nancy Jo Day, BS ’68
I started at Mizzou mid-year,
arriving in January 1973 as a native Californian who did not know
that there was life – or weather – beyond the West
Coast. I clearly remember my first snowfall. It was at night,
and I was out with friends near the library. Tiny snowflakes started
drifting down, and I looked up to see my first snowfall. It was
so beautiful. In the light of the streetlamps, the snowflakes
sparkled like silver and diamonds. And they didn’t really
fall; they danced! They swirled and fluttered up and down, catching
updrafts and breezes. It was magical; like nothing I had ever
seen before. All around me my dorm mates – native Missourians,
most of them – grumbled a bit about the weather, and then
laughed at my excitement. While subsequent snowfalls were never
quite as magical as my first, I still enjoyed the Missouri winters.
They provided real weather, something entirely un-Californian.
True, sometimes the trek across a slushy Peace Park from McReynolds
Hall to the Journalism School froze my toes, but I never tired
of playing in the snow like a little kid.
– Marcida Dodson, BJ ’74
Snowflakes look like miniature
columns of light in this photo of the Quad by Dave Keckler. |
Winter can transform the MU
campus into an enchanted place. Back in the ’70s, there
were ground-level lighting pots installed under the trees ringing
the quad. Snowflakes caught in the upward beams formed miniature
“columns” of light.
Despite the beauty, we natives forget that Missouri winters can
be quite foreboding to some out-of-state students. Back in 1975,
my girlfriend, who was from southern California, was petrified
of driving on ice and snow. After one particularly heavy snowfall,
I drove her out to where Cosmo Park is now, which at that time
was the site of the decommissioned Columbia Airport. After positioning
my ’69 Impala in the middle of the old runway – with
nothing to run into for 100 yards in any direction – I
put her behind the wheel. For the next hour I gave braking and
turn-the-wheel-in-the-direction-of-the-skid lessons until she
was comfortable driving in the conditions. The time was probably
well spent because she eventually moved to Norway.
Winter at MU also affords opportunities to invent new ways to
break your neck. One snowy night during winter 1973, a large
(possibly inebriated) group of students hiked from Tiger Village
to a steep hill north of I-70, in close proximity to the old
public safety firing range. Trash bags and sheets of plastic
we had brought along became impromptu sleds, until we discovered
some car parts illegally dumped in a nearby ravine. The inverted
hood of a car, loaded with eight or ten students, can reach an
incredible velocity on a 30-degree incline. Unfortunately, there
was little runoff room at the bottom, so the people on top of
the pile had to roll free before momentum carried us into the
tree line. It’s
amazing what fun we had before the advent of safety-approved
equipment and the development of common sense.
– Dave Keckler, BJ ’74
I lived in the “Crit”
House in the Loeb dorm complex. We couldn’t wait for the
first snow. The annual “Stone House Streak” to the
Columns took place. As the lads circled the buildings, we pummeled
them with snow and ice balls, helping to make their streak a painful,
yet memorable one.
– Don Schiller, BA ’89
On more than one occasion, we “borrowed”
trays from the Wolpers/Johnston cafeteria to use as makeshift
sleds on snowy days. By the time you arrived at the bottom of
the slope, the tray/sled had filled with snow. We would return
to the dorm wet, cold and laughing.
– Janet Hull, BS HE ’71
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Last Update:
March 12, 2007
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