Monday, February 22, 2010
Falling out of love with winter
Ben Beagle
The aging, semi-hysterical retired reporter rides shotgun with the greatest station wagon driver of them all down the rocky road of life. Mondays in the paper's Extra section, steady as she goes.
Recent columns
Boy. I used to love winter.
You know. The old commercial with Bing Crosby in GI fatigues and looking like he ought to be on sick call while singing "White Christmas."
And folks jumping around in the snow and going "yoo hoo" and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer leading Santa's sleigh to all these homes where the snow disappeared by itself from the driveways.
And nobody rushed to the stores and carried off all the bread and milk and nachos and salsa. And if they did, your Aunt Zelda would have considered them to be tasteless and wouldn't have asked them over for nonalcoholic eggnog and marzipan on Christmas Eve.
Well, from where the sun now sits -- provided it comes up again -- I will never be a fan of winter.
I may make my son happy and support daylight saving time. If we had daylight saving time in February, the sun would be up longer and melt more snow.
And I used to hate it when the snow that came in the night was melted by 3 p.m. and it didn't take a brave man to go down the driveway to the mailbox.
But this dreadful month has made me a changed man and I, although not particularly violent, would shoot Punxsutawney Phil if the rascal had the guts to show his face again. Never did like groundhogs anyway.
Snowbound
To say again, about the time we became snowbound -- that was before the wind got up and we thought we might get a maple tree limb through our hearts as we slept -- Old No. 36 here was definitely past the folks going "yoo hoo" and making snow angels.
Also, this was the time the television set went bad and -- until our daughter brought us an extra -- we had to listen to this really weird music that young people like to bounce around to, Beethoven's Fifth and some questionable country music.
Wasn't a Glenn Miller tune to be heard and somehow Old Glenn's music makes being snowbound a little more comfortable. We used to dance to his music as compared to bouncing.
Being snowbound was an adventure then but now it means watching early-morning TV because the wind kept you awake and this is not a "yoo hoo" kind of thing.
That is to say that few people like to watch one of those nature channels on which Tasmanian devils chew on the corpse of a less-fortunate animal.
I wonder if your average Tasmanian devil ever sees his or her shadow?
Ben Beagle's column runs in Monday's Extra.
