It must be winter in Montana, where the first official day of winter brings pipe-freezing cold and road clogging snow.

So in an era when schools are postponing or canceling sporting events because of things inside the school, like the dreaded Covid bug, those same events, even though they are played indoors, are being canceled because of conditions outdoors.

Where do we go? What can we do? April is a long time off.

I’m glad you asked, even if you didn’t ask.

Let me tell you my friends, there is plenty to do when the snow flies and it’s so cold the polar bears at Zoo Montana stand in a circle giving each other hot chicken soup baths.

I grew up in Billings, in an era where there were no video games to keep snow-bound kids entertained in zombie-like trances for hours on end.

For one thing, my Norwegian grandma Sena, who once chased me for telling her to get out of the way (b-word) after she spread her apron in front of the TV to stop my brothers and I from watching pro bowling on a rainy Montana day, would not have allowed us to hole up inside.

Heck, she chased me a full block down the street, scissors in hand, screaming stuff in Norwegian because I called her the b-word.

Spent part of that night in a tree a block away because I did not want to find out what she had in mind with the scissors. Dad finally talked me out of the tree.

So anyway, we found things to do, even when the snow was knee-high to a tall moose.

Allow me to share them with you.

Ever play “Fox and Geese”? We used to have hours of fun running through the snow playing this simple game, which requires no special equipment of any kind, although galoshes are advised. For those who don’t know, galoshes are, or were, rubber boots with buckles that fit over your shoes, theoretically keeping your feet warm and dry.

Participants first march around making a big circle in a snow-covered field, the bigger the circle of trampled snow the better. Then “spokes” are trampled toward the middle of the outer circle where a much smaller circle is carved out.

One person is chosen as the “fox” while the others play the “geese”. From there the game is much like tag, only the geese and fox must stay on the paths that have been stomped into the snow. If you are tagged, you morph into a fox and become a goose chaser.

When everyone is tagged, the game is over.

Yeah, we did that for hours.

Another winter “activity” took place at the local outdoor skating rink. Each winter the city would flood spaces in city parks, allowing Mother Nature to create a frozen rink. Where I lived, that space was the parking lot at Cobb Field, the former city baseball park that has since been replaced by a fancy new stadium.

There was even a small wooden house where chilly skaters could go in and huddle around a gas fireplace to warm up.

Outside, we played a game called “pom-pom pull-away” (or something to that effect). Skaters would all gather at one end of the rink while the chosen one, usually the best skater in the group, would go to the other end and say “pom-pom pull away, come off base or I’ll pull you away”. The horde of skaters would then try to sneak past the chosen one into the other end zone without getting tagged.

If you were tagged, you became a tagger.

This was a game that went on all afternoon, until parents came looking for their kids or someone broke out the other game we loved to play on that rink, broom stick hockey.

It was poor man’s hockey with a crushed beer or pop can serving as the puck.

Another activity that kept us busy on snowy days was sledding. This involved finding a good hill, like the street in front of my house, or preferably, the hills of Pioneer Park, about a mile away.

We would tromp through the snow to the park where there were all manner of “sleds” going down some long, mildly steep slopes. Flattened cardboard boxes were in abundance, but every now and then someone would show up with an actual toboggan.

Often the sledding adventures included going down the hill side-by-side with another sledder and trying to knock them off their ride with snowballs.

And of course, snowball fights were a special treat.

Two teams, sometimes from nearby neighborhoods, would spend all morning building a wall of snow. Great building blocks for the walls could be made by packing snow into an empty cardboard milk carton, then dumping out nice snow bricks.

Next, the combatants would make piles of snowballs and stack them behind the walls.

At a set time, which was often when one of the participants just couldn’t wait any longer to throw a snowball, round balls of snow filled the skies.

One learned quickly to pop up, throw the snowball and get back behind the wall. If you were hit “cleanly” you were out and had to stand on the sidelines.

When all these events had been exhausted, everyone hauled their weary carcasses home. Wet clothes were hung up to dry inside the “mud room”. Usually those clothes were replaced by warm pajamas.

Hot chocolate flowed freely.

Good times, good times.