Snow
The lovely Christina emailed to tell me she’d seen the first snowflake of the season. I don’t think she was impressed with my less-than-ecstatic response, but when you’ve experienced 28 years of snowstorms, frozen feet, chapped lips, numb fingers, blizzards in May, ice storms, cars and trucks that won’t start in cold weather, days (weeks more like it) without sunshine, emergency oil deliveries in the dead of night, backaches from shoveling, sprained ankles from slipping on ice, and at least one near fatal car accident from black ice on the highway, the first snowflake of the season kinda loses its charm. Just a little.
The 5 years in Northampton Massachusetts put the kibosh on any affection I have for snow, the final nail in that coffin. I owned a pickup truck then, and one of the first gifts from Northampton to me was the theft of my car stereo. Unfortunately, in their haste to make off with my sound system, the thieves irreparably damaged my heating and air circulation systems as well. The defroster barely worked at all, and the heat was no better. I’d put the fan on high, and barely any heat came out of the vents.
This was a problem during winter, which lasted from late September until May. The snowfall in Western Massachusetts is pretty legendary: when I backed out of my driveway during winter, my girlfriend would have to stand in the street to watch for cars, because the drifts easily topped ten feet. Once I got on going on my 45 minute commute to school and work, the real fun would begin.
Because the defroster didn’t work, I’d have to keep the windows wide open to keep the windshield from steaming up. Even that didn’t help most of the time, which meant I had to keep a scraper inside the vehicle at all times. I would steer with one hand, and use the other to alternately shift and scrape my frozen breath from the inside of the window glass. And when the windshield wipers crapped out, it was even more fun: I’d alternate between steering and scraping BOTH sides of the windshield, while crusing along at 55 mph down Interstate 91, itself so blanketed in snow and ice you couldn’t see the blacktop. Even better was the freezing rain, which would stick to the windshield because there was nothing thawing the crystalizing drops of water.
I guess it’s hard to really grasp how annoying and physically unpleasant all this is if you’re from a warmer climate (the lovely Christina is from Texas), but I can tell you, when you have to deal with it all the time, it’s totally not charming anymore. And while I still enjoy a good snowstorm as much as the next person (nature in action is truly awe-inspiring), I harbor no illusions about what that aftermath is going to look like.
And if you think that’s bad, let me tell you some of my Canada stories, where the weather gets so cold, your eyelids freeze together momentarily everytime you blink. It’s enough to put you off of winter forever. Sure, snow is charming, but y’know what? Gimme the Bahamas.
12 Responses to “Snow”
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December 5th, 2006 at 11:34 pm
i’m sorry brendan, but i have to respectively inform you that you are utterly full of shit here. snow is the greatest thing ever. in fact, my single biggest complaint about philly is that it is too mild in the winter. i’ve lived in 7 cities and the only one where i wasn’t profoundly disappointed each year by the wintery lameness was chicago–where there was always a solid week that the mercury never got over 0 degrees farenheit (yes, zero, not 32) and where there was usually about two months of permifrost. where my hair would freeze each morning for several months and where i once blew over during a windy city ice storm.
and i loved every minute of it.
i literally spend the entire summer waiting for the fucking heat to break and the darkness and snow to finally come. who the fuck are you to dis my season?
love and kisses,
upyernoz
December 6th, 2006 at 1:06 am
Au contraire Monsieur Upyernoz,
Living in South Jersey for 10 years, I was always dismayed that whenever a winter storm would roll our way, we would always get rain due to the storm transversal *always* falling east of Camden, separating the rain (and warmer temps) to the east and the snow (and colder temps) to the west.
Watching the morning news to see if there would be school closures, I would be equally pissed when I would find that I had school that day while Philly schools would usually be closed, often for a few days at a time.
However, in comparison to the Northeast (Rhode Island, specifically) I do recall many, many fierce snowstorms where school would be closed for days, people would get around on snowmobiles and cross-country skis, and my friends and I could wander around the city, rolling snowballs into 6 ft tall, 2 ft wide wheels and knock them down in the center of the street after the plows came through. I don’t recall actual temps, but as a child growing up there, I remember winter was especially fun as you could count on heavy snowfall, year after year after year, without disappointment. And to take that point one step further, not only did we get a lot of snow, it remained plenty cold for plenty long enough that whenever snow did fall, you could be sure that there would still be some laying around by the time the next snowfall came.
I love the cold and snow. Actually, I like all seasons equally and when I hear people bitch about summer being too hot or winter being too cold, I have to laugh because more often than not, whatever the temperature, when it’s *too* this or that and they gripe for the opposite, when the opposite finally comes our way, there they are, griping about the temperature again and how they can’t wait, again, for the opposite.
Sorry, Brendan.
December 6th, 2006 at 1:34 am
I grew up on the Gulf Coast. I remember one time in my 8th grade year a slight little five minute flurry sent us running from the class rooms dancing, spinning, and screaming with joy. Not one of those flakes reached the ground before they melted, but it was the first time any of us had seen snow in at least 4 or 5 years. The last snow storm had been the big one. We got a full half inch that year. I remember my grandmother standing over us as my brother and I built what was assuredly the smallest, muddiest, most stick filled, and best snowman ever.
I yearned for a white Christmas like you wouldn’t believe, and every year I would watch Lucy from the Charlie Brown’s Christmas Special decline the December snow flakes with a hatred and an envy that you wouldn’t imagine from a small child. (What a spoiled little brat that Lucy!)
Now I’m a Yank. This will be my eighth winter in the North. I’ve learned to stand on icy sidewalks, and bruised the hell out of myself sledding. I can even drive in the stuff now, but every first snowfall finds me squealing like a gleeful Southerner, running out into the snow to catch those first flakes on my tongue like Lucy refused to.
December 6th, 2006 at 2:09 am
Christina, growing up in Newport, we used to get so much snow, my friends in other parts of the town would build igloos out of snow.
Ok, they were giant piles of snow packed down really, really tight and then they carved tunnels out of them but still. They functioned like igloos.
Hell, they might’ve even sprayed them with water to make them freeze.
December 6th, 2006 at 2:29 am
I remember my brother and his friends dragging a bunch of dried out old christmas trees to someone’s front lawn one january to build a fort. It was the closest we ever got to those winter games. The local news thought it was so cute they came out and filmed it. On the up side we had crawfish boils, BBQ crab, and cajun food, and I didn’t need to buy my first winter coat until I was 18.
December 6th, 2006 at 2:53 am
I’ve lived my entire life in “Chicagoland,” as we call it here. (Are there any other cities that use a Disney-esque name to describe their greater metro area?) Anyway, I have to chime in with Upyernoz — we Chicagoans take an almost perverse pride in our ability to handle winter. We laugh at folks who spin their cars into a ditch when there’s anything less than 10 inches of snow on the ground. When our Southern relatives come up for Thanksgiving and complain that the temperature is “only” 30 degrees, we sneer and say, “Dat’s nuttin’. Come back in January when it’s 20 below with a 60-below wind chill!” If the temperature climbs to 40 degrees, I guarantee you will see at least one person driving a convertible with the top down.
December 1 is the day winter parking rules take effect, and it is also the kickoff of the grand Chicago custom known as “dibs,” i.e., staking claim to your freshly-shoveled parking space using lawn chairs or other household objects. Google “Chicago dibs” (doesn’t have to be in quotation marks) and you’ll find several treatises on the subject, including some of the inventive punishments meted out to those who violated the Dibs Code of Honor. One of the more popular is spraying the trespasser’s vehicle with a garden hose until it’s encased in a solid block of ice. Now that we have more transplants from other cities, there’s a lot more whining about how unfair “dibs” is, but so far the pro-Dibs contingent is holding their ground. Do any other cities do “dibs” in the winter?
December 6th, 2006 at 3:03 am
I tolerate the snow less and less as I get older. The inconsistency of it; the way the slightest drop of it turns the Massachusetts roadscape exponentially more retarded and at the same time rabid; the battles waged over parking spots… the list goes on and on. I feel better in warm weather. My bones ache less. My brain aches less.
I did enjoy when a blizzard a couple of years back crippled my employer (grocery store) for a whole day. They had to stay closed, the fuckers. We didn’t get paid, but it didn’t matter. It was bliss. Seeing my former dog gaze up squinting towards the sky when I first took her outside (it might have been her first blizzard) so she could pee and run around in the yard and bound over the already piling white fluff… now that was downright magical. And I always love the way snow, like a good hard rain, makes the world slow down just a little fucking bit and for a change. Everything gets quieter, too. At least at first. But you have to catch it at the right time.
December 6th, 2006 at 3:23 am
Man, what a bunch of YANKEES!
Worked for a company that had its headquarters in Minneapolis. What a crock of shit! Their idea of a good time was to pull a house out on a lake with a tractor.
I live in the South and don’t even like the winter here.I would like to move even further South. My dream would be to find a way to move to Mexico in the Tropics where the temp varies about 10 degrees between winter and summer months and its springtime all year round and the ladies wear light clothing.
December 6th, 2006 at 1:47 pm
Sarah, we have dibs here in Philly too.
I’m with Tim: I prefer warm weather. A little cold here and there to break it up, but I just don’t like it long term anymore. Blecch.
Traveler, call tim and me before you leave for Mexico so we can stow away…
December 6th, 2006 at 4:36 pm
living in arizona makes you appreciate the cold weather that much more. Today we have a high of 74 (don’t worry, I brought a jacket). I have always said I would love to live somewhere cold with snow again, unless I have to get up every morning and go to work in it.
December 6th, 2006 at 6:20 pm
Phil, do you have a website or MySpace page or anything?
December 7th, 2006 at 6:41 pm
no i hate the internet. it is evil. an email address is the mark of the beast. apocalypse is coming in the form of spam. repent now.