“Why, when we were growing up, snowdrifts were often up over our heads, and plowed snow along the side of the road was sometimes so high you couldn’t see over it.”

Those of us who have bragged (or complained) about the amount of snow we used to get “way back when” can give it up now. Today’s generation fully understands what we’re talking about. We don’t need any more reminders about old-fashioned snowstorms, thank you very much.

It’s been quite a while since we experienced one snowstorm right after another, just days apart, and TV weather forecasters have sounded like broken records since the beginning of the year. We’re not snow bunnies; we don’t head to Florida shortly after Christmas like so many of our friends and neighbors. However, the thought of warm breezes and bright, sunny days is more than a little enticing right about now, we must admit.

With no breathing room between storms, road crews have had no time to clean up sidewalks and piles of snow that can’t be plowed, but rather needs to be removed via some other means. Just keeping the roads passable is a full-time job, and some of the side roads are barely wide enough for cars to pass. You can only push snow so far off to the side.

Whatever weather pattern we now find ourselves in is not to our liking — at least not for most of us, since it has meant canceling school, closing businesses, postponing events, hiring folks to shovel driveways, walkways and rooftops, and staying off the roads as much as possible.

We can’t even imagine how emergency vehicles manage to cope. Several times last week we heard ambulance calls followed by the message: “Their driveway or roadway hasn’t been plowed.” They respond anyway, but it just makes their job that much harder.

We’ve been lucky so far in that we’ve been able to get from one part of town to another, albeit hard going, unlike some city dwellers where travel sometimes comes to a standstill.

Two years ago, while in Boston to attend a newspaper convention, we were stuck in the hotel for two days when traveling on the roadways was prohibited. Hotels can be pretty boring. You can only watch just so much television and wander around the lobby just so long.

Going outside to see the sights or shopping was out of the question, because everything was shut down. Even the restaurants had told their staff members to stay home.

We definitely dodged a bullet this past weekend when we were expected to get a foot or more of snow here on the coast. Mother Nature must have heard the pleas of Lincoln County residents, because she spared us, dropping only a few inches of fluffy snow on us, unlike the southern Maine coast which got hammered, as did Down East.

We pray every day that we won’t hear another storm is headed in our direction (one is possibly in the offing for the middle of this week) but in the meantime, we guess we’d better be thankful we’re not someplace where things are even worse.

Rather than looking at the calendar, which tells us we’re only mid-way through February, we need to keep reminding ourselves that in just a few weeks, it will be spring, although we may have difficulty identifying its arrival because barring a miracle, we probably won’t be able to see bare ground until June.