Boy, did we ever get a snow job.

Oh yes, then there was this in the first ten years.

East Los Angeles 1949.

It was a chilling cold and near freezing January morning.  In retrospect, a bit cold for southern California.  I was in kindergarten at Montebello Park Elementary school and this was the only time I was at the same school my oldest sister Peggy attended.  She was in sixth and again I was in kindergarten.  

None the less, somewhere in my mother’s collection of photos kept in a fruitcake tin is a black and white photograph of my sister Peg and a friend tossing snow balls.  The photo was taken out front on a grassy area of our elementary school.  Mr. Steelman, the school principal, allowed we kids to play in the sparsely accumulated snow up until it melted.  Knowing this is a rare occurrence and he proclaimed let’s have fun while the snow lasts.

Based on my own witness this snow was the first and last snow I had experienced in L A proper.  Before that event I’m not sure if I knew what snow was.  Since then, there were maybe two or three days reaching down to 32-degrees but no snow for decades.   At least up to the time I had left California back in 1972.

To play in the snow after that rare 1949 event we had to drive miles to the east to a mountain southern Californians called Mount Baldy.  The official name of this 10K foot peak was Mount San Antonio.  A mountain peak during the winter season would be covered in snow.  Certainly, a favorite place to take your 4-man toboggan and sled down until one became sick of it all.

Before more houses were built around us and smog became a factor one could see Mount Baldy from our back yard.  Our backyard was about fifty miles from the icon peak.  Snowball fight anyone?