Today, I return to a gripe I’ve had often in the past. Kids not making use of snow days. Unexpected days off that are provided by winter snow storms.

Now, in the face of that I present a story that immediately teeters on the edge of hypocrisy, but give me a second and I’ll make it.

Austin and surrounding schools called school for the day Tuesday in the face of an incoming storm that, like the “Star Wars” prequel movies, failed to live up to the hype. Sure, there was some drizzle that complicated already snow-packed roads, the accidents scattered throughout squaks on the scanner and the occasional snowflake that dotted one’s eye.

But really nothing else, at least not as of the time I’m writing this column, which if truth must be told was Tuesday night, while the cats bugged me about supper.

Don’t worry animal lovers. They got fed.

So, with a perfectly lovely winter’s day and no school to follow up the mood, I investigated Skinner’s Hill for intrepid young adventurers ready to take on the perils and extremes of Austin’s best sledding hill.

Sure it wasn’t Bones Hill from my youth that not only gave you a sweet steep hill, but also a secondary, smaller hill on to the wind-whipped vistas of Lake Wilson. Or if you were really daring, you would take the sled through the well-worn paths of a copse of trees sprouting from behind the Catholic Church. This path wove through the trees and then across a road and then down into the lake.

None of us claimed to be very bright. My friend Dan Ruiter might have been the smartest of us all, which may or may not lend itself to the suspicion of why he was never there when we went sledding. Or maybe he was and I have to finally adapt to getting older and not remembering.

Dan, if you are reading this, feel free to correct me. By the way, that would make you Reader No. 24. Sorry, Reader No. 23 just introduced himself as such in Hy-Vee the other day. You snooze, you lose.

Long story short, we knew how to make use of the day when school administrators decided that three feet of snow was probably too much to risk — wimps.

To my delight, my trip to Skinner’s Hill was not wasted. Right away I caught brother and sister Dalton and Dezeray Hill followed by friends Chaslin Arndt and Izzy Canta as they took their turns on another portion of the hill.

I couldn’t be there as long as I wanted, but it was nice to be part of the fun, even if I wasn’t sledding myself.

Which brings me to my complaint. There aren’t near enough people taking advantage of days like this. “Fortnite” is not taking advantage of days like Tuesday. Yes, I video game, so I’m not completely lame -— just partially lame in that I don’t play “Fortnite,” and for good reason that if enough gamers read this think I should explain, I will in a separate column on down the line.

Believe me when I say though, I can’t afford to keep buying controllers.

While it made me happy to see kids and families out enjoying a nice winter’s day minus biting winds and frigid temperatures, it does remind me how frustrating it all is.

Every winter day, when I drive through town, I see perfectly good mounds of snow being left underutilized. Each hill I see gives me a layout for a snowfort.

And let me tell you something, we had some epic snowforts in our day that were monuments to child engineering.

I know in the past I’ve talked about Gene’s Service and the massive snow fortress we built out of the plowed snow Gene left behind the building.

We had tunnels throughout that we constantly tended to, reinforcing some with ice. We had rooms with vents and notches for candles for any night playing we might do.

We had tunnels that started at the top and ended in an exit at the bottom, polished and tested and used as an amazing sledding tunnel.

Built on the top of this fortress were buttress, hiding behind it’s bastions an arsenal of both snow and ice balls.

Again, I marvel at getting out of my childhood without major injury.

And yet, today I see very little evidence of these kind of snow forts being made and it makes me sad.

Sometimes at the office we had ideas of making a snowfort, but then we found out that our publisher at the time thought it would be more important to get work done or some such nonsense.

Don’t get me wrong, he was right and let us get away with a tremendous amount of tomfoolery, hopefully because he knew we would still get our work done. It just would have been nice to be a child … again.

Nevermind.

Now it should be said there are probably some people out there, some kids who make snow forts and to them … my hat’s off to you bold pioneers.

Just remember, when making said fort, always be aware of where the Ford is parked.

I know this because … well, nobody accused us of being that bright.

And why don’t I remember Dan ever being around for this?