Family Builds an Igloo Nearly 12 Feet High

Shoveling out from winter snowstorms is hard work, but Joe Plescia of 50 Pepperidge Road has found a way to make it fun.

Plescia and his kids have built an igloo, a snow hut large enough to accommodate five to six people sitting inside for a little winter fun.

It's a place to sip some hot chocolate just for kicks.

"We go in there and hang around," Plescia said Saturday, as he showed a visitor around the inside of the packed-snow igloo. There are chairs under a wooden frame made of posts and plywood. He built the frame in the fall, anticipating the winter snow to cover it up.

"I had no idea there would be this much snow," he said, referring to the three major storms since Christmas Day.

And with more snow predicted for the weekend, there was no end in sight for the igloo except to get even bigger.

It is easy to see how building one in the wilderness could keep the cold and wind off a family, if they had to build their own shelter, he said.

"You close the door and it's warm in there. It's not too bad, once you get in there," he said. "You get warmed up with a bunch of people."

And it's peaceful too. The thick walls of snow are a kind of insulation against the noise of passing traffic.

"You notice how quiet it is. You don't hear any sound. It is so quiet," he said.

Joining in the igloo antics were Nick, his oldest, who goes to Masuk High School and is a junior on the swim team and the football team. Karianne, 15, is a sophomore at Masuk. She plays softball there. Joseph, 13, is an eighth grader at Jockey Hollow. Vincent, 7, goes to Monroe Elementary School.

Plescia himself is the owner of Success Printing & Mailing Inc. in Norwalk. His wife, Bernadette, is the owner of B-Sweet/Dr. Mike's Ice Cream right here in Monroe.

Of all the family, little Vincent probably gets the most use out of the igloo. He is also the proud owner of a castle in his backyard, for the warmer months.

"The dog has been in there with me, he loves it," Vincent said of the family's German Short-haired Pointer.

A lot of neighborhood kids have come over to play in the igloo, but they haven't named it yet. They'll probably get to that, though, once all the work is done.

"It's a lot of shoveling and everybody got involved," Plescia said. "I actually have an ATV and pushed a lot of snow on it."

The more snow, the merrier.

"It's gonna get higher and bigger and bigger," Plescia said. "We're taking bets on how long it will last. We're thinking until March or April, because there's so much snow piled onto this thing."

Having built one, the family knows that igloos are as practical as they are fun to build.

"People have survived in them on mountains, when they dig those, and Eskimos lived in them in the old days, I guess,"  Plescia said.

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