So today it’s the 17th of March and month five of
a winter that never quits. The forecast tonight is for six to eight inches of
snow. There was time in life, when I would have retreated to the fruit cellar
with a bottle of Jim Beam and said “I’ll be out when I hear robins singing.”
But this year something snapped in side of me and I’m saying to old Mother
Nature. “Bring it on old gal. I’ve got the plow pointed out the garage door, so
give us your best shot. No more of those weenie three inches that just irritate
us and make it all slippery and snotty. Let’s set a big record for the
eighteenth of March. I got no place to put the crap but I don’t care anymore.
My truck has been in four-wheel drive for three months and I’ve been walking
like a drunken penguin since November but I’m not backing down. The voices are
telling me not too and for once, I’m listening to the voices.”
With all due respect to my father, who scoffed at today’s
weather and claimed that when he was kid, the leading edge of the last glacier
was just north of Emily and they used to go up there and gather night crawlers
pushed up by the ice. He talked about the year, when on the fishing opener he
fished of an ice flow in Gull lake with his old three horse Johnson clamped on
the back edge with a couple of C clamps and two boards. That was the year the
polar vortex ran all the way down to Aruba and it was July twenty-fifth before
they planted the garden. That was the year the tallest trees in the woods
looked like they all had a crew cut because the deer ate the tops off flush
with the twenty-foot snowpack. He had to add six feet of stovepipe to the
discharge on his snow blower, just to get it over the tops of the drifts.
Yes Dad, if you’re looking down at me, Have a little pride
in me because your war stories are going to look like Grimm’s fairy tales when
this one is over. Heck, lets make it a challenge. Tonight I’m shutting off the
heat and wearing my Sorrels’ and snowsuit to bed. I got a pot of corn beef and
cabbage simmering on the stove and I added a quart of peppermint schnapps, just
to fortify it. I gassed my snow blower and 4 wheeler up with Sonoco racing
fuel. I blanked out the weather channel on the television. Radar? I don’t need
no dumb radar. The voices are telling me what’s going to happen and those
weather guys are full of it. They don’t have a clue, never did-- never will.
Liars all of them. They lie worse then the politicians at election time.
Oh, this is going to be so much fun tomorrow. I got the
giggles right now. Oh Lord this is better than the Super Bowl. The dog is half under the bed looking
at me. Stupid mutt if she only knew what’s coming. Note to self. If there is
reincarnation don’t come back as no dumb dog. What a dull life. No voices to
talk to. Just eat and poop and mark the snow banks. Stupid paws without thumbs
that can’t handle a snow shovel or hold a cup of grog while looking out the
window at the storm. Boring. To all of the snowbirds that ran away last fall.
You’re no better than the soldier that deserts his unit in the heat of battle.
What are you going to tell your grandkids? How many margaritas you drank while
you were getting all pruney in the pool? I gota go now. Need to rest before the
battle. Can’t have any distractions because the voices don’t like that. Got to
be on top of my game tomorrow. Shhh.
No comments:
Post a Comment