Tales From Exit 22 by Al Batt

The weather here goes bump in the night.

My feet were cold all the way up to my ears.

Old Man Winter had taken control of the thermostat.

Winter got in despite our best efforts to keep it out.

I enjoy the writings of Willa Cather and she had this to say about the weather of our harshest season, “It was as if we were being punished for loving the loveliness of summer.”

I know that some of you flee to warmer places for the winter. Not me. I check the weather to make sure I don’t miss the worst of it. I’ve spent every Christmas of my life here in Minnesota, where even the nicest of winters can be long and nasty.

Spring, summer and fall fly by, but winter is a season in the dentist’s chair. Every winter is the winter of my wife’s discontent. She told me that one of her cousins was in a far better place. Before I could offer my condolences, she added, “Yuma.”

We have two seasons here, shovel and swat. There is no business like snow business. A solar energy spill makes a frigid day tolerable. The sun is nice, but it limits the shoveling. We have the winter Olympics here every year. It’s called getting out of the driveway. Bill Watterson wrote, “Getting an inch of snow is like winning 10-cents in the lottery.”

The pastor works part-time for a towing company. Last winter, he saved a Kia Soul. He was on his way to his car — a Kia Parsonage — to go to town to get some hip balm. Many folks get chapped lips, but it gets so cold here that we get chapped hips. He ended up in the emergency room after tripping over a frozen weasel and hitting the icy ground with a chapped hip.

He believes that if Lot’s wife had turned to salt while in Minnesota, she’d have been applied to the road.

Winter is the season when you can feel like a hero by just walking down to get the mail and we worry about dying of snow. When the world looks like the Beatles’ “White Album,” even those of us who are so dense that light bends around us get the drift. Why is it that in a blizzard, it’s always a white or gray car that has no lights? The snowplow driver, when he isn’t making a mountain out of a snow hill, sells mailboxes part time. I can tell when it has been a long winter. My snow shovel is bent from me leaning on it.

Carl Reiner said, “A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.”

I say, “Don’t ever put the snowblower away.”

If you can’t take the heat, move to Minnesota in January when it’s colder than a snowman’s lunch. The cold gives a crispness to cuss words, but violence is never the answer unless someone asks, “Cold enough for you?” If you don’t see your breath here, it’s either July or you’re dead. One neighbor never looks at the thermometer because it makes him cold. He eats bad, spicy food just for the heartburn. He told me that he’d enjoyed three winters in Minnesota. Unfortunately, he has spent 62 winters here.

Last winter wasn’t the good-old days. A friend from Arizona called and asked the temperature. He calls when he sees on The Weather Channel that we are having nasty weather.

I replied, “It’s 2 below, but I didn’t think it would get that warm.”

There was a pause before he said, “Really? I’d heard that it was 20 degrees below zero there.”

“Oh,” I said, “you mean outside.”

Supermarket employees retrieve orphaned carts from the parking lot’s cold surface. These good folks, part of God’s frozen people, gather up the shopping carts into a rickety train and push it back into the store for eager shoppers to use. I don’t want to be just like them when I grow up, but they are among my heroes.

Tree shadows on white snow are mesmerizing. Tolerable becomes the new perfect. I carpool with the Zamboni driver and take comfort in the fact that no one notices my weedy garden.

I keep moving. I don’t want snow to blow under my feet.

I treat winter as I do most things. I prepare for the worst and I’m happy if it isn’t that bad.

Winter is what carries us to spring.

Spring will be here eventually and take care of it.

Happy winter. Merry Christmas.

 

Hartland resident Al Batt’s columns appear every Wednesday and Sunday.