My neighbor Crandall stops by -&160;right at lunchtime, of course, a fact not lost on him.

Wednesday, December 26, 2001

My neighbor Crandall stops by -&160;right at lunchtime, of course, a fact not lost on him. He is wearing a shocked look.

&uot;You know, your fence wasn’t electric when I was here yesterday,&uot; he says.

&uot;That’s true,&uot; I admit. &uot;You touched it, eh? Remember, the best way to get even is to forgive.&uot;

&uot;Why do you do things like that? You need some adult supervision here. How about some food? I am so hungry, I could eat a horse without tipping the rider. I know you don’t have much, but the least you could do is to share what you don’t have equally. The winters were worse when I was a kid,&uot; my neighbor blurts out. &uot;The snow used to come up to my waist every year. Now it seldom if ever gets that deep.&uot;

&uot;You’ve grown some taller,&uot; I offer. &uot;Maybe not any smarter. At least when you were 15 years old, you could count to your age.&uot;

&uot;Is that another one of your conspiracy theories? I ought to slap the lips right off your face,&uot; says Crandall. &uot;When I was a kid and we had a winter like last year, we all went to the beach. In the sixties, the city fathers almost changed the name of Hartland to ‘Cold Enough For You?’ In those days, winter wasn’t a spectator sport -&160;the Weather Channel hadn’t been invented yet. Our bad winters used to run in streaks -&160;of 30 years in a row or so. I remember one year, when I was around 12 years old, I got drifted over by snow while I was walking down to get the mail. It took me three days to tunnel my way back to the house. It was so cold that year, whenever anyone said anything, we had to break up some of the furniture and use it to start a fire. We needed the fire to thaw out the words so we could hear what the person had said. If we had had another inch on the bottom of our thermometer that year, we would have frozen to death.&uot;

&uot;The world was flat in those days. At least the land around your farm was. It was so flat, you could watch a dog chase a rabbit for 3 counties. We had some hot days, too,&uot; I throw out in an attempt to change the subject.

&uot;Hot? The summers were unbearable. One year it was so hot that no one in my family moved for over three months. Those were the days that my Uncle Fudd was the most popular guy in the county. He was huge and provided more shade than any barn. He went on one of those quick weight loss diets and no one has seen him since.&uot;

&uot;That reminds me of your cousin Chumley. He put those Odor-Eaters in his shoes and disappeared,&uot; I said.

&uot;Don’t try to change the subject. One year our calendar had 11 months of winter and 5 months of summer. That was when we had real weather.&uot;

Obviously Crandall was employing a strange use of the word &uot;calendar.&uot; It was a definition that I had been previously unaware of.

&uot;Have you noticed that our summers sometimes get a little humid? But the humidity is nothing like it was when I was a kid. I remember when the neighbors’ barn burned down. The volunteer fire department came out and there was so much humidity in the air that the firemen just held one end of the hose in the air and the water ran out of the other end. The mosquitoes were worse then, too,&uot; my neighbor goes on. &uot;The mosquitoes were so big that they always had wood ticks on them. One year, we lost a full-grown steer to mosquitoes. He was a tough old critter, too. It took three mosquitoes to do him in. Actually, it took four of them to carry him off. In those days the skeeters all carried license plates. The mosquitoes were so tough that they would spray a little mosquito repellent on you as a condiment before they’d bite.&uot;

My neighbor Crandall suffers from an affliction common to Minnesotans. A Minnesotan saying that our winters aren’t bad and that our summers are pleasant would be like a Texan admitting that his state isn’t all that big or a Green Bay Packer fan saying he doesn’t have a drooling problem. Our weather isn’t for everyone. One man’s floor is another man’s ceiling. As for me, I only have one thing to say about winter or summer … it could be worse.

Hartland resident Al Batt writes columns for the Wednesday and Sunday editions of the Tribune.