The Winter of 1949

07 Jun The Winter of 1949

They say love only comes to a man once in his life. I don’t know if that’s true, but it did come to me in the winter of 1949 in the form of Tora Michelson. I was coming down the stairs when my sister opened the front door and her friend Tora and her sister Sarah came in. They were going to walk to school together. Tora and Sarah stomped the snow off their boots, and I said ‘hi’ and melted. The Michelson sisters were not blonde. Their hair was silver, and some of it curled out from under Tora’s hand-knitted stocking cap. Her big, clear blue eyes sparkled, and her cheeks were rosy from the cold. She wiped her drippy nose with the back of her mitten. I had never seen anything as beautiful and Tora Michelson.

We spoke for a bit while my sister got her coat on and then I realized one of the greatest disappointments of my life. I had come down the stairs to greet her and we were talking eye to eye but I still had another step to go down. She was six inches taller than me. Not only that, but it looked like her twelve-year-old sister was taller than me too! When you were fifteen in the fifties, you just didn’t go out with a girl who was taller than you were.

That evening I asked my sister about Tora Michelson and her only comment was, “she’s too tall for you.”

The winter of 1949 was a snowy one, and I shoveled sidewalks and driveways before school on snow days and weekends. Tora’s brother Rolf shoveled that winter too, so we teamed up. I didn’t tell him that I only wanted him as a shoveling partner so I could be close to his sister. Rolf had a morning paper route, and his father made sure he shoveled their walk first. Rolf’s house was six steps up from the sidewalk, and his father was very particular about the steps and walk.

Rolf’s father was a tall man who emigrated from Norway with his bride in the thirties. He worked at the Kipp as a tool grinder, played an accordion (more of a squeeze box), and sang in a Polka band. Mr. Michelson was a lady’s man and a hard drinker. Many a night he didn’t make it home from the dance hall, staying with one girlfriend or another. I suppose his tall figure, good looks, and sing-song accent endeared him to the ladies at the dance. Tora had a hint of that accent and I adored it. Mr. Michelson hadn’t been home for three days, which was unusual. Mrs. Michelson was rather stoic about it, she said he would come home when he came home.

The snow kept coming down and Rolf and I made good money. Some walks we shoveled every day. My next-door neighbors, an elderly couple of color, had to be shoveled without charge. My mother wouldn’t let me collect from them. Mr. and Mrs. Shepard had lived on Northern Court for so long that they were able to keep chickens in the backyard under a grandfather clause. Mrs. Shepard gave my mother eggs weekly and an old rooster every now and then. I shoveled their walk and stairs.

Winter dragged on and still no Mr. Michelson. He had once talked of moving to Florida and speculation and rumors had it that he had. The police said he left Turner Hall, his last performance, drunk and with a lady. Rolf’s paper route and shoveling money brought some income to the house, and Tora babysat to provide a little more. I brought them bakery good from Weber’s Bakery where I worked, and the family seemed to get by. I was mad at Mr. Michelson for leaving them with no income and for leaving them in general. I would never leave Tora once I grew a foot. I should say that my romance, adoration, weak-in-the-knees, can’t eat infatuation with Tora Michelson was completely unrequited. Tora knew me only as Joyce’s older brother and Rolf’s friend. I mooned and swooned and tried to be casual. She was still six inches taller than I was.

January turned, as it always does, into February and at the end of that short, cruel month the sun came out and the snow started to melt. Little by little and long before the crocuses, lost things popped up: a forgotten sled, a bicycle that hadn’t been put away, and Mr. Michelson. His body was next to the six steps leading up to his house with “squeeze box” in hand. The snow and Rolf’s shoveling had covered him over. The Michelsons moved away that spring. They went to live with Mrs. Michelson’s sister in Saginaw, Michigan. I never saw or heard from Tora again, but I will always remember that silver hair curling out from under her hand-knitted cap, that sing-song lilt to her voice, and the snowy winter of 1949.

“I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done,

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.”

The Song of Wandering Aengus

                                    — William Butler Yeats