Blizzard in southern illinois????

[John(videodoc)]

well the weather man finally got it right

looks to be about 6 inches on the ground here in southern illinois. should be gone by tuesday, as its to be raining on monday. kids and i had fun playing in the snow though. ofcourse i didnt have to time to getting that new blade hooked up, was figuring it could wait til next year.

its there in the pile somwhere.

anyway it well past noon by the time i got us dug out, the in-laws dug out and my aunt next door dug out. went in warmed up eat some good potato soup and back out to play with the kids.

[Rick Prentice]

Looking at those snow pics makes me hungry for some of that potato soup too, then a bowl of your favorite flavored Schwan's ice cream Rick

[John *.?-!.* cub owner]

That is the best kind of snow, looks good and gone in a hurry.

[W6NZ]

Great pics what a stormy looking sky.Never seen it that colour before.

[Rudi]

John:

It started snowing big flakes last night about 4pm when I was pickin the girls up from university. By this morning, alles was weiss mit der schnee... all was white with freshly fallen snow.. very nice about 1-2 inches.... probably be gone by the morning on Friday though.. already melting.

I took the plow off, but just as well, because it would have been useless as the frost is now coming out of the ground, and I would probably be making a mess.... course, that just means, I would have to fix it up in a couple weeks, which means MORE SEAT TIME

[400lbsonacubseatspring]

John:

alles was weiss mit der schnee... all was white with freshly fallen snow..

Rudi,

Are you sure you're not "Pennsylvania Dutch"??

That's about as fine an example of the mixed up pig-German we speak down here, after 300 years of separation from the mother tongue, as I've seen.

It's curious to see a branch of the language go astray in a "time capsule" -- where no new words get added, but english words get substituted. For example:

Automobile, Computer, Tractor, Combine, Thresher -- all have the same name in "Pennsylvania Dutch"-- "Das Maschine"

And, the time honoured way to ask a fellow if he speaks "Pennsylvania Dutch" is to ask "Kannst Du Migge fange?" (can you catch flies?) The correct answer being "Nur wann Sie stille bleibe." (only when they sit still)

Although I cannot master the idioms of the language, and in reality, it is a language comprised entirely of idioms, I can understand it relatively well. It is fun to sit amongst the old PA Dutch and Amish and listen to them talk amongst each other.

Regrettably, aside from the Amish, there are probably less than 5000 people who speak PA Dutch fluently anymore, and writing it is difficult, because the pronunciations are not exactly like the German, or the English. The Amish will never write the language down, of course, so I fear it is a dying tongue.