I jumped out of bed and raced into the kitchen; the best vantage point from which to catch a glimpse of our backyard. The snow was piled high; the remnant of a powerful Nor'easter that had pummeled the area throughout the night; drifting white powder mounded up against the side of the house as high as the windowsills; that beautiful, amazing snow – my emancipator.

I grinned the biggest grin any 10 year-old boy ever grinned. "No way are we having school today,"I thought, running back into my bedroom to get a look out onto South Main Street.  The streets were impassable; nothing in sight, save a snow-covered, incapacitated '56 Ford pick-up that appeared to have been sitting on the side of the road for quite some time.

"Brucie!" I shrieked, ripping the covers off my younger brother. "Wake up! There's no school today! It snowed a ton out there!"

Bruce rolled over, grunted a few times and pulled the blankets over his head.

"Come on! Get up!" I insisted. "It's a snow day!"

Bruce rolled back onto his side and peeked out at me from beneath his bedspread, his eyes barely open. "No school?" He mumbled almost incoherently.

"Well, the fire whistle didn't blow yet," I responded optimistically, "but it will. I know it. It has to!"

Whenever school was canceled, the fire whistle would blow a specific number of times at a certain time in the morning. I don't recall the number of times or the exact time it would blow, but I knew for sure back then – count on it. Every kid in town knew that glorious sound; the same sound that summoned the volunteer firemen when there was a fire, and even let them know where the fire was by the pattern of the toots; the same sound that echoed across town every day at eight in the morning and eight at night - the eight o'clock whistle. The entire system was based upon the pattern by which the whistle blew, just like Morse code. Things were pretty simple back then.

"Did you hear it on WARA?" My brother asked, sitting up on the edge of his bed. "Did they do the cancellations? Did they say, Mansfield?"

WARA! In all my excitement I had forgotten about WARA, the local radio station in Attleboro that announced the school cancellations for every school in the area. I ran back into the kitchen and turned on the radio. It was already tuned to 1320 AM; it was always tuned to 1320 AM. My mother listened all day while she puttered around the house and my father always tuned in to Attleboro High School basketball; all their games were broadcast on the station. My dad would get really excited when Attleboro played schools like Durfee in the Tech Tourney. WARA was like a religion in our house; and whenever they said those magnificent words, "No school in the Mansfield Public Schools today;" WARA was akin to God to every Mansfield school kid.

I sat at the kitchen table, my ear glued to the old Philco radio. My dad said Philco made good radios, and my dad knew just about everything.

"….and now for school cancellations," the announcer began. I squirmed in my seat as he read methodically through the list; alphabetically from A through L. He reached the M's and I slid down to the edge of my chair. Please, please, I pleaded, and then—those magic words – like words from the hallowed lips of an angel, "Mansfield Public Schools – no school all day today. "

I let out a shout that could have been heard at the Old Country Store in West Mansfield. Oh, what a day; what a glorious day! All was right with the world. Nothing could ruin this day – nothing!

Then came the sullen, stern voice of my mother, the taskmaster, "Bobby, you have a lot of shoveling to do before you go anywhere. If you think you're going to run off with your friends, you have another thing coming"

I never understood what "another thing coming "meant and I didn't want to know because if it was coming from my mother; it surely involved something I didn't want to do.

"But I want to go sledding on Spring Street hill," I protested vehemently.

"Get the shovel, get out there and get busy," my mother demanded, pointing to the back door.

I went out on the back porch, grabbed the shovel, mumbled a few things under my breath when I was out of my mother's earshot and pushed open the back door. The door only opened about six inches because so much snow had drifted up against it, so I reached around with my hand and swept away enough snow so I could squeeze through the opening.

For the next two and a half hours I shoveled the front steps and walkway; I shoveled the driveway; I shoveled the walkway going around the house to the back steps, and I shoveled and I shoveled and….well, you get the point.

When I had finished, I threw the snow shovel back up onto the porch, ran down into the cellar and grabbed my sled and high-tailed it down the driveway.

"Where do you think you're going?" My mother bellowed. "Did you finish shoveling?"

"I finished", I replied. "All of it."

"Fine," she said, "wait for your brother. He's putting on his snowsuit."

My brother, Bruce, came stumbling down the stairs in his oversized snow suit. He looked like the Michelin man. I grabbed him by the hand and we trudged through the knee-deep snow, pulling our sleds behind us.

We finally arrived, huffing and puffing, at the Spring Street hill by the intersection of Spring and Union Streets, right next to the old Cobb and Evans Building. The entire neighborhood was there. Spring Street hill was the best sledding spot on the south end of town. The traffic was very light back then, nearly non-existent, so it was pretty safe even though we sledded in the middle of the road.

We spent hours sledding down the hill, dragging our sleds back up the hill and sledding down again. After a few hours, Bruce said he was cold and wanted to go home, so my friends Stevie, Dave and I walked him back to my house. We still had a few hours of daylight left, so we decided to build a snow fort in the snow bank next to the road in front of Dave's house. Dave's mother and father were both at work, so we figured we could get away with a lot more there.

We hollowed out a large space deep into the snow bank and built long, four-foot snow walls on either side. Then we made up a few dozen snowballs and piled them up inside the fort. We had a few special snow balls that we had made with ice in the center. They looked like ordinary snowballs until you got hit with one; then they hurt - a lot!

We were ready to go on the offensive. We squatted down behind the walls surrounding our stronghold and waited for an unsuspecting motorist to drive by. Then we jumped up and each of us launched a snowball high in the air, leading the car just a bit so it drove right into the falling missile. We were pretty good at this and our projectiles usually hit their target; then we'd duck back into the anonymity of our fort, laughing hysterically.

This was great fun until one day I grabbed one of the special ice balls by mistake. When the allotted moment arrived, I threw my ice ball high in the air, out in front of a brand new Oldsmobile Super 88. It was a perfect launch, a strategic masterpiece, right up to the point where it struck the Olds' windshield and cracked it right down the middle. The driver slammed on his brakes, slid about twenty-five feet, spun a couple of doughnuts and came to a halt on the opposite side of the road. The door flew open and the irate driver jumped out and ran right toward us. I'm pretty sure there was steam coming out of his nose.

Dave, Stevie and I jumped out onto the street and ran for our lives, the incensed driver hot on our tails. We took off into the woods behind Dave's house and ran until we eventually lost the guy.

We waited until we figured it was safe and made our way back to our houses, vowing to tell no one what had happened. I skipped up the back steps onto the porch and took my boots off. When I opened the back door, my mother was standing there waiting for me. She did not look happy.

"You're in big trouble young man!" She said assuredly. "I know what you did to that poor man."

I was going to play dumb, but I knew I had no chance so I did what any red-blooded American boy would do. I lied.

"It wasn't me," I protested vehemently. "I didn't do anything. I was just playing in the fort."

"I saw the whole thing," my mother screamed. "You did it and now you're lying about it!" She raised her hand and swatted me on the rear end several times. I felt nothing. My mother was five feet tall and weighed about one-hundred-and-two pounds. She couldn't hurt me. This was a joke; right up until the point where she said, "Wait til your father gets home."

I went to my room, flopped down on my bed and waited for the inevitable; my father was going to kill me.

At 5:30 p.m., as he did every day, Monday through Friday; my father walked through the front door, physically and mentally exhausted from working all day at a job he detested, ready to spend a quiet, uneventful evening at home. But before he even got to take his coat off, my mother greeted him at the door. "Do you know what your son did today?"

I was peeking out my bedroom door and I could see the vein on the left side of my father's forehead start to swell - then throb. Yup, I was definitely a dead man walking. That vein was famous in our house; the signal that my father had reached his limit.

In my father's defense; all he wanted to do was sit down for a few minutes, maybe take his shoes off his throbbing feet. That wasn't a lot to ask. I knew he wasn't really angry at me; he was really angry because he couldn't walk through the door of his own house and get his coat off before he had to hear the list of all the things my brother and I had done while he was at work.

Well, I got my rear-end spanked that day. Spanking was okay back then. It was what was once known as discipline - and it worked. I haven't thrown a snowball at a car in 52 years.

My mom and my dad have long since passed. Sometimes I wish I could hear my mom's voice again. "Bobby, you should know better; you're older," and I'd love to see that vein in my dad's forehead pop out just one more time, although I'd just as soon pass on the spanking.

Relationships are complex. The relationship between a parent and a child – a husband and a wife - between siblings - with neighbors - in the workplace; but relationships are what life is all about.

There are places I remember
All my life though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places had their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I've loved them all – John Lennon

Have a happy and safe New Year!

Bob Havey is a freelance writer and a Mansfield native, currently living in Easton. His other column, The View From Here, may be seen each Tuesday at http://easton-ma.patch.com 

Editor's Note: Beginning January 7, 2011. Bob Havey's column "Take Me Back" will move from every other Thursday to every Friday at http://mansfield-ma.patch.com. We hope you, the reader, will continue to enjoy a more frequent dose of Bob's gift for relating his boyhood memories of Mansfield.