Medfield's Austin Verge and Garrison Schilling serve a customer after they get their generator going.
By James Kinneen
Hometown Weekly Reporter
Last week’s snowstorm (the earlier one, which is depressing to write) was believed to be unique in that just a few miles could make a huge difference in snowfall totals. So, since we cover a variety of MetroWest towns, I set out to see if there were any noticeable differences I could find.
The first town I visited was Westwood, where I saw a bunch of kids playing on the mounds of snow that the plows had created. It was interesting, because they weren’t sledding, they were just climbing both at the high school and in Veterans’ Park.
One kid was climbing so high, the only explanation was that he wanted to try and get higher than the goalposts at the football field.
It looked like the snow totals were decent, although traffic was moving freely.
Unsurprisingly, in Dover and Sherborn, where snow totals were likely highest, there were some traffic jams. One of them came from a giant ice puddle, which looked to have accumulated because of the mixing of snow and rain.
Dover Town Hall was closed, but sported a decent amount of snow on its rooftop. The real place that fascinated me, though, was Sherborn’s Snow Street.
It would be hard to argue you didn’t know what you were in for when winter storms came, considering it’s literally called Snow Street and to no surprise, it was in fact covered in snow.
The middle school also showed how much snow the town received, if you could figure out where the middle school is was from behind all the white stuff.
Police doing details and plows weren’t the only ones making good money on Monday morning - a couple of high school kids in Medfield were, too. But their money wasn’t for them: it was for breast cancer awareness.
Outside of Medfield State Hospital, Penny Sundays set up their generator to make cookies and Belgian waffles, and to sell candy and drinks. The brainchild of Austin Verge and Garrison Schilling, the duo have been doing birthday parties and plan to head to some beaches in the summer. They are currently planning to contribute their earnings to local hospitals.
“Me and my buddy, Garrison, decided to start this trailer up and bring some joy to Medfield,” Verge explained. “Over the summer, we’re going to try and hit some beaches and stuff, just trying to get the town happy since we’re in a really tough situation right now. We do birthday parties and stuff right now, and we were parked outside of Lovell's for Christmas. So we're just trying to do little events like this to make the town happier and raise money for breast cancer awareness. We’re probably just going to donate to some hospitals, since we haven't really made enough money to throw at the charities yet. That’s kind of why we’re out here - trying to get more publicity to get more money and ship it to the charities.”
Named after the penny sundae, a cheap, snow-cone-like product sold during the Great Depression, the group wasn't selling those on Monday morning. Instead, they were selling the newest addition to their menu: Belgian waffles.
“I’m an avid snowboarder and every time I go, there’s always a line for Belgian waffles. Everybody loves them. Can’t get enough of them and I figured if I added that to the menu everyone would love that, especially since we’re out here. It’s kind of like skiing with sledding, so it fits right in.”
The teens of Needham weren’t doing anything productive like that, but they weren’t destroying anything either. I saw a couple cars head down DeFazio Park, and realized a bunch of young kids were doing donuts in the thick, unplowed snow. They got scared off by me and my camera, but it was clear from the tire tracks that they’d been doing it for a while.
Outside of DeFazio, I went to town hall to see if anyone was doing anything - but nobody really was. The train station was pretty well plowed, so it was tough to gauge how much snow fell there.
In some ways, it was the perfect snowstorm. Not blustery enough that everyone was dressed in head-to-toe ski suits, but still snowy enough to coat the town in a pretty layer of winter white.
Lastly, I made my way to Walpole, where the snow was the lightest.
It was so light that I came across a couple cars around the library that hadn’t been cleared off or shoveled out.
There was so little of it, in fact, that eternal lazy-guy-in-the-snow questions began to arise: do I try to plow over the snow or shovel? If I sat in this car with the defroster on, would I need to scrape the snow off?
Looking for somewhere where the snow hadn’t been touched I went to the Rural Cemetery, which was very well plowed, but couldn’t really gauge how far from grass the snow was.
While the snow totals varied, it didn't seem to matter much. With remote schooling killing snow days, it really boiled down to how much traffic was slowed, how much you had to shovel, and how much fun your kids could have playing in it.
Such is winter in the age of COVID-19.
