Monday, November 27, 2017

Reading Hitchiker's guide to the Galaxy to my kids around 1982 I think

By then we had begun home schooling the kids and it was quite a year for snow then in Mt. Shasta so we had to rent a house in town because the road to our 2 1/2 acres was snowed in and I didn't have a snow plow. So, whenever we couldn't easily sled our groceries through the snow wearing cross country skis to our A Frame house on 2 1/2 acres at 4000 feet then we often stayed with friends or rented space in one of their houses or even rented a house or apartment for a couple of months then. My wife had gone to San Francisco area likely to see her parents and I had stayed with the kids because mostly we had a male cat named Pinky (looked exactly like Garfield with  similar tom cat's attitude who didn't travel well in cars then. He was happier staying in Mt. Shasta and running out into the snow then in town. We had begun home schooling the kids then so I taught them their lessons and when we had free time I read to them Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy because we all laughed a lot at it. And they loved to ask me impossible questions about the book. Because the book was impossible in a hysterically funny way always. Later we read "The Restaurant at the end of the Universe" which is equally funny in it's own way too. WE also saw the PBS version of the books and later in 2005 the  HItchikers guide to the Galaxy came out in a movie again which was fun to see as well.

However, I was sad to hear that Douglas Adams who wrote these books passed away in Santa Barbara in 2001. My wife is from this area so she knew about his passing. I hadn't known he lived there. But, I know originally he was from England. She only told me she knew about him having lived there tonight.

Also, I would have often had to have plowed up to 5 miles of road or more just to plow the road all the way to our house some years. And this wasn't practical because we often had 7 feet of snow on our land at one time. it's why I built the A-Frame because the roof is so steep it doesn't collapse with 7 feet of snow on the ground because of the steepness of the roof even if no one is there to shovel the snow off. There seldom is ever this much snow there now however, because of Global Warming. There is still snow but it is several thousand feet up the mountain above 4000 feet to 5000 or 6000 feet or above now compared to the 1980s when you might get 3 to 4 feet even in Dunsmuir on Interstate 5 and 7 to 11 feet in Mt. Shasta during winters then. Now you seldom ever get snow in Dunsumir that lasts and if you get 1 to 4 feet of snow in mt. Shasta city it is more of a rare occasion. So, literally there are some years when you won't get almost any snow that sticks in Mt. Shasta more than a day or two or a week. So, winters are very very different now than the 1970s and 1980s. The last really big snow in Mt. Shasta city was 1992 when they had 12 feet of snow in town and roofs were collapsing and there was no where to park unless you dug yourself a parking place out of 12 feet of snow.

No comments: