Nice Winters, and Other Strange Concepts

We had such a nice, warm winter going on there.

(Well … when you say “nice winter”, that’s always relative. But in northern Indiana, if the temperature stays above freezing for any amount of time in late December through January, that’s a nice winter.)

I wanted it to continue. I contacted my state representative and asked him to build a wall between us and Canada, to keep out those nasty polar vortexes. Look, I love Canada, but I understand why they call that country America’s Hat: They have to wear hats up there to keep their ears from falling off. For nine months a year.

You have to respect people who get by even though they think North Dakota is a bit too warm for them.

Anyway, my state representative recently got a frostbit nose on the Pokagon State Park toboggan run, and was thus sympathetic. He threatened to shut down the state government unless they funded a Games Of Thrones style ice wall, until it was pointed out to him that keeping a polar vortex out would require a wall eighteen miles high … and besides, Lake Michigan was a problem.

That guy has since moved to Boca Raton, which I discovered is in Florida. Traitor.

Just to make it clear, this is NOT Boca Raton.

So, without a wall or my backup idea involving a line of several hundred thousand salamanders pointed north, winter came back.

(Imagine my embarrassment when I discovered salamanders had to be powered by something, which made the idea financially unsound. I thought they all just crawled to the state line and breathed warm air into the wind.)

So one day I went outside to do yard work and it was in the low 50s (Fahrenheit–let’s not get silly). Two nights later it was 22 degrees, and lake-effect snow–which my wall would have stopped–was causing vehicles to skid all over like a Disney On Ice version of “Cars”.

Which … would be a brilliant show and I’d pay to go, come to think of it.

“Screw it, bring in the zamboni.”

Anyway, for awhile there we were having decent (relatively) weather and the south was getting clobbered with ice and snow. I feel for the south, but there’s a certain irony there: For most of my life I’ve sworn every winter that by next winter I’d move away; but like an angry Democrat celebrity, I never do. Honestly, I really love Indiana the rest of the year, but is a northern Indiana winter worth that?

Plan B was to become a rich author and have a winter home, an idea I abandoned when I found out the average author lives under the poverty line.

When it snows in the south the counties dig out their only snow plow (manufactured by Mack in 1959). Most adults stay in, most kids go out to throw snowballs, and people who have to drive somewhere crash. All of them. But there’s a good side: southern snow rarely lasts long, and pretty soon they get nice and toasty warm again (relatively).

Without a wall. Or maybe with, because I guess the upper Midwest functions as their winter barrier.

In any case it’s over now, and we can expect two or three months of complete ick. I shall survive by staying home as much as possible, writing under a multi-spectrum lamp while wearing both long flannel underwear and a big fluffy robe, and several layers in between. It’s not quite denial.

But it beats Boca Raton in the summer.