Remembering snow days

Was just dreaming about the old snow days when we were kids and how we'd listen to the radio for the school closures, hoping ours was on the list.  Of course if it was that bad, it mean a few hours of shoveling the front stoop and walk to the sideway, back steps and that walk.  And of course we lived on a corner so there was 250 feet of sidewalk around three sides of the house and a double car plus driveway on the other side.  The wind would whip around so our next door neighbor's driveway was clean down to the concrete, while ours would have a couple feet of drifts.  Just resigned myself to that's the way it goes.  Fortunately there was a grassy strip on both sides of the driveway to pile the snow up on.  It was a heck of a workout.  The worst was clearing a path all the way to the street, then having the plow come through and pile a bunch of hard packed snow, slush and ice back into the gap.

But I'm sure for those of you who still deal with snow, this is not a distant memory.  Although we didn't have a snowblower, so all of it was hand dug or pushed.  Also annoying was the fluffy powder, because you couldn't pick much of it up and you couldn't throw it either.  You'd have to walk it gently to the side and pour it off the shovel.  There was a happy medium between the powder and the hard packed ice, where the snow was just wet enough to throw, but not too hard to scrape off the ground.

Once all that was done, it was time to break out the sleds.  Mostly my friends and I would go to the Hempstead Turnpike overpass at Wantagh Parkway.  The on ramp at the southwest corner wasn't a regular cloverleaf, since it came from a side road parallel to the parkway.  There was plenty of room to slide down from the turnpike across the flats without coming anywhere near the onramp.  We'd go up and down that hill dozens of times, sitting on the sled, laying on the sled, two on the sled.  Once a kid fell off his sled in front of me and I ran over his leg.  But with all the layers of clothes we had on, it didn't hurt him.  When we had the time, we'd also go to what was then Salisbury Park, now Eisenhower Park, a little over a mile away.  That had longer hills, but it was a pretty exhausting, wet walk home from there after climbing up the hill so many times.  I seem to remember flying off the edge of the sidewalk into the frozen lake sometimes.  For a while the lake was empty also and we'd go off the edge, through the air and onto the snow about 6 feet down.  But usually that didn't end as well as it sounds, so I'm pretty sure we only tried that a couple times.

The best place, when we could get a ride, was the Bethpage State Park Golf Course.  That had some really big hills.  Usually my friend Jimmy's father would take us.  We wouldn't get too many runs inthough, because it was at night and it was a long hike up the hill.  But it sure was a heck of a ride.

I also remember going out at night when snow first started to fall and being the first one to put bicycle tracks in the snow.  Everything was so much quieter as the snow falling blocked the normal ambient noise from the turnpike.  Very peaceful.

Heeg family name derivation

I have often wondered whether there was any link between the Frisian Heeg's and the Hoesbach Heeg's.  This seems to sum it up, although I'm pretty sure Heeg's go back further than the late 1500's in both places and may have left France earlier.

"This German, Frisian, Flemish, Dutch, Danish, Swedish and Dutch surname of HEEG was originally derived from any of various places in Northern France, named from the Old Norman word HAGI (enclosure). It was a locational name simply meaning the dweller at the hedged or fenced settlement. The name is also spelt HAGLE, HEGEL, HAGBER, HAGER, HAGEMAN, HEGEMANN, HAAG, HAAGEN and HADEMANN, to name but a few. During the 17th century surnames were brought to Britain, North America and southern Africa by French Huguenot exiles. The Huguenots were French Protestants, and in 1572 large numbers of them were massacred in Paris on the orders of Queen Catherine de'Medici. Many of the survivors sought refuge in England and elsewhere. Although the Edict of Nantes (1598) officially guaranteed religious toleration, persecution continued, and the Edict was revoked by Louis XIV in 1685. It was then the trickle of emigration became a flood. Many migrated to England, while others joined groups of Dutch Protestants settling around the Cape of Good Hope. Others sailed across the Atlantic to establish themselves in North America. A notable member of the name was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich HEGEL (1770-1831) German philosopher, the last, and perhaps the most important of the great German idealist philosophers. Born in Stuttgart, he studied theology at Tubingen and was a tutor in Berne (1793) and in 1801 he became a lecturer at Jena, but his academic career was interrupted in 1806 by the closure of the university after Napoleon's victory at Jena. In 1818 he became professor at Berlin, and remained there until his death. Over the centuries, most people in Europe have accepted their surname as a fact of life, as irrevocable as an act of God. However much the individual may have liked or disliked the surname, they were stuck with it, and people rarely changed them by personal choice. A more common form of variation was in fact involuntary, when an official change was made, in other words, a clerical error."
http://www.4crests.com/heeg-coat-of-arms.html



Our coat of arms from Hoesbach is a bit different - well hung unicorns instead of beasty looking lions and hummingbirds:

Also the text above describes them as Huguenots who were Protestant.  Not sure if our ancestors converted after that or what.  Possible that Protestants weren't all that welcome in Germany either, so maybe they switched teams then.  Frisians are mostly Calvinist Protestants still, however most descend from people who have been there since the first century.  All Germanic people, but they would not have had last names going back that far, so I really doubt there's any relationship between the Frisian Heegs and Hoesbach Heegs and the last name just had a common root in the language.

There is a small community named Heeg in Germany at 50.5666025 North latitude,7.3781724,15 East longitude.

Trip to Maine with Cousin Diana

I can't remember exactly when it was, probably around the summer of '73 I'm guessing.  Uncle Tom and Aunt Mary had been up in Maine a few years and we were dying to see them and their farm.  So Diana and I took my van up there.  It's something like a 7 or 8 hour drive from Long Island to Augusta (actually East Vassalboro per Margaret) (found the street in the assessors files as 1046 CROSS HILL ROAD, Vassalboro, Maine), pretty sure it was 8 back then.  Speed limits were lower.  We got up there and they had a good sized two storey farm house with 30 acres of mostly woods, but they did have a field planted with at the very least, corn and onions.  They had a Norwegian Elkhound named Smokey...very good dog.  When we arrived, Uncle Tom was quick to point out that I needed more air in my front tires.

It was nice during the day, but chilly at night.  Their only heat, or at least the only heat they used was a woodburning stove in the kitchen.  Uncle Tom had a white pickup truck and had recently bought a towable cement mixer that he lent out to the neighbors.  There was a lot of comraderie among the neighbors and everyone pitched in whenever someone had a sizable project.  I don't remember much about the inside of the house, except the kitchen where we spent most of our time.  They said that they liked when the snow got higher than the windows since it acted like insulation and kept the house warmer.

I saw a deer that was in the corn field, but as soon as he heard me, he bolted through the woods.  When I told Uncle Tom about it, he said it was probably in the next county by then. We went to a garage sale and I found an egg poaching pan that I thought was interesting, since I'd never had poached eggs.  I don't remember what everyone else picked up.  Aunt Mary made us corn fritters and onion pancakes for two of the breakfasts that were just delicious.  I don't remember much else about what we ate, because these were so different and with ingredients from their own field, but I'm sure there were martinis involved.

Got to talk to Uncle Tom about what I was studying. He knew quite a bit about electronics having been a chief engineer on the Grace Line ships and being responsible for everything mechanical and electrical onboard.  Aunt Mary and Diana went picking corn out in the field.  While they were picking corn, Aunt Mary farted.  Diana thought it was hilarious, since no one in our family dared fart in front of anyone.

Uncle Tom smoked a corn cob pipe and Aunt Mary rolled her own cigarettes with Bugler tobacco and a hand roller.  I picked that up myself and smoked hand rolled cigarettes for quite a while - much better tasting, less harsh, and slower smoke and much cheaper than prepackaged cigarettes.  Pretty sure Uncle Tom smoked Prince Albert, but I'm not 100% certain.

I'd really been looking forward to doing some work around the farm, but there wasn't really anything to do.  I don't really remember much else about what we did up there. 

Diana and I drove back and on the way I decided to stop in Mystic Seaport for lunch and to do a little sightseeing for an hour or so to break up the ride.  Diana really seemed to enjoy it.  One of my favorite places too.