My sister and I used to call it “atomic snow.”
After a reasonably substantial snowfall late in winter, the plows in Vineland would clear the main shopping district of Landis Avenue and the parking lots of local department stores.
Now imagine all that snow piled around the base of the traffic light with just the light peeking out. For that matter, try to imagine concrete traffic lights in the middle of the road today.Courtesy of the Daily Journal
With nowhere else to put it, they’d create massive piles of snow; in the case of Landis Avenue, they’d often push the snow around the traffic light standards, concrete supports in the middle of the road.
In many cases, those piles would still be there come spring.
By that time, the snow would’ve taken on a greyish tone, exacerbated by Vineland’s use of cinders from the electric company spread for traction on the streets and lots. It was an odd dichotomy, the trees beginning to bud and the snow piles stubbornly refusing to go away.
MORE: Vintage photos around New Jersey
Lots of people have lots of memories from winter that aren’t necessarily of the ‘winter wonderland’ variety, like the car on the street completely buried in snow because the owner was the only one not to join the communal dig-out. Before snow blowers, there was the point-of-no-return reached after a heavy snowfall when the strongest shovelers couldn’t throw the snow over the piles they’d created themselves.
Here’s a second gallery this year of vintage photos of wintertime in New Jersey. Enable captions to read about each one. And here’s a link to the earlier one.
Greg Hatala may be reached at ghatala@starledger.com. Follow him on Twitter @GregHatala. Find Greg Hatala on Facebook.
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