Column: Tales From Exit 22, by Al Batt

The cold is getting in.

Welcome to life in the frost lane.

Fall was shorter than a gnat’s inseam.

You know winter is coming when most of the turkey has left your system and you’ve lowered your standards for warm temperatures.

Winter, fondly referred to by many as “not again,” arrives Dec. 21. We get a tad too much of it. It’s dark too early and cold too long with stupid amounts of snow.

If your first answer to the question, “How are you?” is “Cold,” then it’s winter.

The cure for the summertime blues is the wintertime blues. Winter tests our endurance. It’s a season lacking in reason. We have goosebumps where geese don’t have them. Being miserable is half the fun of a winter.

The Weather Channel ignores us until the winter hits with an apocalyptic fury. A neighbor went snow blind from watching The Weather Channel. Bettors tend to go with the under when wagering on temperatures. Like revenge, winter is best served cold.

A perfect storm is the blizzard that doesn’t happen. When Armageddon threatens, we make frantic forays to the supermarket to stock up on bread, milk, toilet paper and pizza.

I sleep on the north side of the house. It’d be a lot warmer inside. We had to take down the Christmas tree and put Chapstick on it. It was so icy that the café put nearly as much salt on the sidewalk as on the french fries.

We become ice road truckers, struggling to keep tires in the two ruts in the snow. Like Moses, we part the white sea ahead of us. I shovel off the welcome mat. I don’t want anyone slipping and falling on it. If that makes someone feel welcome, he can shovel the rest. The iceman cometh and he stayeth too long. Ice causes people to not handle gravity well.

It is a time of the year when we’re reminded that we shouldn’t only dress for the weather, but for the weather forecast, too. Even though getting a correct winter forecast is like herding cats. A cold front makes for cold rears. We need to get winter out of the drawers and closets. We wear ugly winter hats. They are our crowns of thorns. We don’t care what’s on your head, only what’s on your mind. You don’t need to dress well, just warmer.

I maintain optimism by wearing warm socks. Victoria’s Secret has a wool line in Minnesota. So much clothing is worn that no one is recognizable. It isn’t cold if you don’t feel cold. Young people buy new clothes to wear to snow-shoveling camp. If you wear a parka while standing in your bare feet on ice, on average, you are comfortable. Minnesota— glove it or leave it.

A flock of geese landed on our pond. Spring weather always arrives a little later than hoped; summer’s heat always begins a little earlier than hoped; fall always leaves too soon, and winter starts whenever it feels like it.

Winter doesn’t always wait its turn, probably because it’s the Ringo of our four seasons. The weather turned cold, the pond froze solid and the geese awoke to find their feet frozen in ice. They flapped their wings and flew off, heading south with a frozen pond attached to their feet.

A thermostat can destroy a budget, causing us to burn furniture for heat. There is nothing more restful than a warm, crackling fire in the living room — as long as you have a fireplace. Winter teaches us that we don’t need air conditioning to keep cool. We measure success by a snowblower’s horsepower. A knight in shining armor is the guy who plows your driveway. Having a neighbor with a tractor increases property values. We put snow tires on exercise bicycles.

The wind makes mountains out of molehills of snow and turns every human into a wind instrument. We rely on deep reserves of body fat. We put on winter weight and save it for a snowy day.

How does a Minnesotan decide where to retire? He straps a snow shovel to his car and drives south until someone asks, “What’s that?”

I hope you are a good starter on cold mornings.

Just remember three things. If you have a snowball’s chance, it’s a good one in winter.

If summer were in the winter, winter wouldn’t be so cold.

And by the time you begin to think that mosquitoes aren’t such bad things, winter will be over.

 

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