SNOW WARS—Snowball Battles of Yesteryear
Cliff Satterthwaite’s mural brought back memories of snowball battles of my youth. It was a tradition for Cliff Satterthwaite to decorate Springettsbury Township’s Menu-Ette Restaurant windows with paper murals. The pictured window features a snowball fight and children sledding. Click on this LINK for a Full View of the illustrations in this post; since the ydr.com site will occasionally cut off important details in the cropping of illustrations.
In 1958, I was in third grade when our family moved to Springettsbury Township. We lived along Ridgewood Road, near North Hills Road. I quickly discovered the neighborhood snowball battles that occurred in the field adjacent to our backyard. These snow wars occurred after nearly every pack-able snowstorm of sufficient depth. Yesterday’s record snowstorm would easily qualify!
These were semi-organized snowball battles. Two teams were selected. We’d have a set amount of time to build the snow forts and then a set amount of time to do battle with the snowballs. On the honor system, individually we kept track of the number of times we were hit with a snowball. Every so often, we’d have a truce to add up the hits; thereby keeping running team scores during the battle.
After North Hills Junior High School, now known as Central York Middle School, was built in the field behind our house, the snowball battles moved into the Kindig woods on the north side of Ridgewood Road. The snow wars in the woods eventually evolved into snowball throwing contests, to see who was best at hitting tree trunks with the snowballs.
In 1965, while driving by Yorkana Cemetery, Cliff Satterthwaite noticed a snowball battle in progress. Cliff’s artwork captures this “Snow Fight in Yorkana Graveyard.”
This is a southwest looking view of Yorkana Cemetery; a cemetery located on the western side of Main Street in the southern end of Yorkana. The Cliff Satterthwaite artwork was used with his permission. Cliff lived in York County, PA, from the mid-1950s to the early-1980s, creating a host of artwork, with much done live on location. He has a book available containing nearly 400 images of his artwork from that time period; e-mail contact is monsterart4grani@aol.com
Related posts include:
- Menu-Ette Christmas Window Artwork
- Menu-Ette linked to York Diner and Playland
- Reminiscences of Walking to North Hills School
- Mary (Dietz) Poff was a Yorkana Postmaster
