All important journeys begin with a thousand slips. Didn't someone say that? Anyway, I journeyed 64 steps from my front door to my office this morning, with frozen snow and ice all around. I refused to be stopped because, well, life demands it.
Tuesday was a day of vegetation, as frozen stuff fell from the sky and other than, as kids would, we went outside to be snowed-sleeted-iced on in pure fun. Cold? Whewee, as they say where I come from. The wind was frigid, knifing, brutal. All I could think of was, the New Orleans Saints won a playoff game at this temperature?
The ground around us is as white as Jesus' robe on the mountain top. Now it is not only white, it is frozen, so my journey was one of courage and commitment, and someone out there should note this fact for courage and commitment isn't something that one would normally associate with me.
Our dogs would go out onto the snow-ice surrounding us with small steps, fearful steps, slippery steps. They did what they do in complete shock, it seemed, running all around to the fence around the yard where there was somewhat normal ground. Fifty feet instead of 10 because they didn't want to step on this white stuff.
Facebook was lit up with folks, like me, putting up photos of the white stuff or complaining about there not being enough or any of the white stuff or some transplanted northerners talking about how pitiful we southerners are in this stuff.
My experience with real snow is limited. In the blizzard of 1963, when we tried to get through the pass, we ate each other. No, kidding. Wrong memory. Nah, in 1963, it did snow 15 inches. As I remember, when I was, uh, negative 15 years of age or so, it snowed big ol' flowing flakes all day and night, and though I don't remember it this way, it apparently happened on New Year's Eve to New Year's Day. I do remember watching the Sugar Bowl and there being snow.
I remember little about large snowfalls from then on. Till I spent a winter at USA Today, where it snowed quite a bit. My apartment was actually below ground level and I could look out to see what appeared to be snow globs above me.
Then there was Reno, Nev., where I spent 10 months as Executive Sports Editor of a couple newspapers. Out there, it snowed on my first day, April 1, 1983. I knew I was in Oz. In the winter one day it began to snow about 2 p.m. and by the time I left at 8 p.m., it was snowing so hard I couldn't see to drive. I wasn't one of those southerners who couldn't handle the snow, though. I was one of the Nevadans who couldn't handle it. I saw one car slide through a stop sign across the intersection and simply start going again when it finally arrived across the street. I lived on a hill. As I tried to go up it, I began to slide. I tried four times, and each time the back wheels spun like a mouse on a wheel. Finally, I gave up. I parked the car on the side of the road, I thought, and I began the slippery walk home.
The next morning, I walked down the hill to see if there was anything I could do with the car, and it, like many, was parked pretty much in the road. I left it there for the spring thaw, as best I remember.
The point is this. All the transplanted northern folk living down here who talk about how much we can't handle the snow and laugh at us, and all those northern folks who read this while the snow piles up in feet, not inches, outside their windows should remember this: I (we) can't handle the ice and snow. That's a given. But come Saturday, while you're still deep in the freezer you call winter, it will be 72 degrees here in Eunice.
And I can surely handle that.
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