In the aftermath of the blizzard of 1996, on Jan. 14, to be specific, Drew Zimmerman’s dad Jim had a great notion.
He created a huge pile of snow with his snowblower and when he headed off to work – his business is Zimmerman Jewelers in York – he told his son Drew and daughter Ashley to hollow it out to make an igloo. If they were successful, they would sleep in it that night.
They were and they did.
Drew was 7 at the time and doesn’t remember a lot about the construction, but he remembers sleeping in it with his father and older sister in a sleeping bag atop a cardboard floor. “I remember it was cold,” he said, recalling the temperature that night dipped to 18 degrees.
“I thought that was freezing,” Drew said.
But it was nothing compared to Monday night when Drew re-created his childhood memory with his kids, Opal, 9, Onyx, 7, and Ruby, 5, in the yard of their Manchester Township home. (Drew is a watchmaker in York, but you can see the influence of his father in his kids’ names.)
The entire construction process took two days, Drew said. He piled up the snow Sunday and let it freeze to strengthen its structural integrity. Then, on Monday, he and his kids hollowed it out and shored it up to make sure it was safe, a process that took maybe three hours.
And that night, they slept in it, atop a cardboard floor, huddled under a comforter to share their body heat. Like his father, he fitted a piece of wood over the opening to keep the heat in, making sure to cut a one-inch-square hole in it to allow air to flow in so they wouldn’t asphyxiate.
He checked the temperature. It was 9 degrees overnight. It was cold and Drew didn’t sleep. “My kids fell right asleep,” he said. “I might have dozed off in the middle of the night, but I woke right up.”
He also stayed awake to check on his kids during the night, to make sure they were OK.
He would recommend it, come next snowstorm.
“Done the right way, taking the right safety precautions,” he said, “it makes an excellent family tradition.”
