This is from outside the Bergen home of Norway’s royal family. Here’s another beautiful photo of this mansion in wintertime.
This is from outside the Bergen home of Norway’s royal family. Here’s another beautiful photo of this mansion in wintertime.
I’ve never been there, but I’ve been to the royal family’s (much less impressive, but architecturally interesting) Stavanger residence.
It was pictures like this that sustained my spirit during my years in Florida exile. Left me with an overromanticized view of the place. And now I have all the winter I want.
But the pictures are still nice.
I haven’t had good sledding in years. It used to snow around here, but not lately. Of course, back in 1993 when there was more ice and snow than we could handle, I don’t think I went out sledding, so I shouldn’t complain.
As a child in the 50s, it would snow so much and drift so high we could walk right up to the top of the cattle sheds and other tall but one story buildings and sled off them. (In Iowa we didn’t have that many hills to sled down…)
The drifts were so hard not only could we walk on them but the cows too as they easily walked over the bob-wire fences and into place they shouldn’t be…like the roads and highways.
And talk about strong winds blowing snow… sometimes the wind would blow snow up the noses of the cows and prevent them from breathing. Now you would think they would be smart enough to breath through their mouths, but, I guess not. This even occurred if the cows came into the cattle sheds to get warm… they’d suffocate in heaps in the corners of the buildings.
I guess I show my age too much here… but that photo was just sssooooooooo inspiring!
So, I’ll show my age some more…that photo really got me thinking!
As a wee lad going off to school in the winter when it had or was still blizzarding too hard for the school buses to run, our hired man, Harry, would get out his old ’43 Chevy and bundle my sister and brother and me into the front seat. The heater was not too good so all four of us crushed together kept everyone warmer.
He somehow had a magic car as he was the only one to get through the three miles to school on gravel-nay-snow piled roads.
I can recall seeing the snow on each side of the car at window height. Such was the magic of that old Chevy! It always got through!
An especially strong memory of these times was the ash-tray on the dash-board of the car. Harry was a chain smoker.
The ash-tray was always over flowing down onto the floor or in these cases, onto my legs. Harry kept his hand on the gear-shift lever that was attached to the steering column. I always had to sit beside him, in front of the ash-tray. (
My sister, being a girl, could not be allowed to sit beside a man she was not related to. We are talking strict Lutheran teaching here!)
My brother being the oldest got the other window seat and missed all the action.
Harry never flicked the ash off his cigarette…it just grew longer and longer until it start to burn his fingers. Each time he took a drag on it, I worried the ash would fall and land on me. Usually, I lucked out and it would land on the legs of my snow-suit that my mother made me wear…but on occasion, the ash would fall off and get caught in the air-stream of the poor fan he used to defrost the windshield…and I’d get it in my face/eyes…. Harry would mumble he was sorry, (as I cried from the painful burn), stub out the old butt and then light up another.
What a way to go to school!
Not to exclude summer car rides. With my dad driving the car, he’d have us kids ride in the back seat and all the windows had to be down.
Dad was a spitter…. (an expectorator?) He spit every where, all the time. (You’d think he was a Japanese man or something!) He frequently spit out his window as long as he was in the car. The wind would catch his spit and suck it back into the car through the back window… into whose-ever face was in that window, sitting behind him.
Yup, Phil, you sure know how to get my mind working on memory lane!!
It’s good to be the king.
Maybe, but it won’t buy you lunch with Barack Obama.