A DEFEATED MINNESOTA MAN

                                

I wrote this six weeks ago but as I write this it is 25 below zero outside with a wind chill of God knows what. I know this-- I don’t want to know what it is. I opened the back door to let Molly out this morning and she looked at me as if to say, “I will drink my own urine and eat my own poop before I’m going out there.” I grew up the consummate Minnesota male.  I slept in an unheated bedroom with three brothers and lived in a house where we had to let the faucet run at night to keep the pipes from freezing. Most houses creak and groan all winter in the cold, ours just froze solid and let out one big bang in the spring. If we complained about the lack of heat in the house, dad just gave us a look that said he was ashamed of us for being such weak links in the family gene pool and told us to grow a set or we would never survive in this world. That was nonsensical to me when you’re just going to freeze them off anyway.

Once out in the world and on my own I found there were places that actually heated their house’s 24 hours a day. But yet my macho attitude had me taking a job outside in the winter flooding ice rinks and as a fireman fighting fires in subzero temperatures. One fire in particular was fought for over eight hours in 31 below zero temperatures. They had to bust the ice off my turn out gear buckles with a rubber mallet when we got back to the station so I could get out of it. But I lived and I wore it as a red badge of courage. When I recanted this story to my dad, who had worked outside most of his life, he just said, “Poor baby.”

As the years have peeled away I became more aware of how miserable it was sitting in my house in the winter. Wrapped in a blanket, even though it was seventy in the house. I took a few exploratory vacations to warmer parts of the United States. There had to be a reason I surmised why most creatures either left Minnesota or crawled into a hole in the ground to wait out the winter. When I got there, low and behold, some of them birds were there all warm and cheerful. I once told a hotel employee in the south how cold it was back in Minnesota. She had tears in her eyes and took my hand telling me, “ Honey it’s going to be alright now.” To all of you that still have to work and live in Minnesota in the winter. I say God bless and I hope your day in the sun will come. It could be worse-- you could live in Wisconsin.

I love Minnesota. It’s been my home for over seventy-five years. From the end of March to the end of November, it’s unequaled for beauty and quality of life and I’ll be back during that time. In the spring and fall the changes come at us every day, one of them heralding in the glorious summer and another ushering us back out We call it the theater of seasons. But after the 15^th of December until the fifteenth of March, not much changes. At least for me it just stays cold and dark. I live on a lake with sixty-nine homes and come winter there are very few of them occupied. I know today my dad is looking down on me, sitting in this chair in the Arizona sun with a sarsaparilla in my hand and he is scowling at me. I can only say, ”I’m sorry Dad for failing you.” I’m a wimp-- but a warm wimp. I raise my glass. Here’s to you pop’s.