Friday, February 1, 2008

Ground Hog Day

I remember learning about Ground Hog Day as a child. Grandma and Grandpa G. were staying with us and there was much talk about it the few days before. I have no idea why this was of such interest that year. I must have been 7 or 8 and the end of winter is pretty important at that age. Kids like to be outdoors. So the rodent must have seen his shadow because the talk was about 6 more weeks of winter. I'm sure that was a downer. I remember taking the calendar and searching it and counting the weeks. When I announced to the folks and grandparents that there was just 6 weeks of winter left anyway everyone laughed. I didn't see this as funny, but I guess it was to the adults. Dad said, "yup that's right, it's just another 6 weeks."

3 comments:

Myrnagj said...

I never thought of counting the weeks on a calendar. I accepted there would be six more weeks.

Dad also said that it would be six weeks until the first frost when he heard the first locust. I didn't count that either.

My foreign students had a good time looking up ground hog day in their dictionaries. Most of them couldn't find it. They did find that a hog is a pig.

LaDawn said...

even just 6 more weeks sounds like an eternity to me....

Sue said...

I think it is 90 days from the first locust until the first frost.
Locust start singing in Nebraska sometime in July. Six weeks would make the first frost in August. This past summer, the locust were singing before the 4th of July. Thus the long winter.
Sue