SNOWBIRD

                                                         

Ann Murray sang a song about the ‘Snowbird’ many years ago. A different kind of snowbird then I’m talking about today. I’m one of the lucky one’s who goes south in the winter to escape the cold of a Minnesota winter. I want to rephrase that and say I’m one of the ones who has been blessed to be able to go where it’s warm; luck has nothing to do with it. One look at my phone tells me today what the temp is in Crosslake and what it is where I am residing. Today the swing is almost 90 degrees.

There was always a certain amount of pride living up north in the winter for me Pride that we were hearty enough to live and work in that climate. We were survivors and descendants of hearty Scandinavians who had been thumbing their frozen noses at the elements for years. We learned at an early age to walk like a duck on ice and snow, -- sometimes backwards--- because the north wind was blowing and making it even colder. We wore flannel shirts, Carhartt coveralls, Sorrel boots and parkas with fur-trimmed hoods. We learned at an early age it was mittens, not gloves, when it was cold outside We held our thumb to the side of our nose and pointed it away from the wind when we blew. We drilled holes in the ice and sat on a bucket fishing.  We slid on sleds and toboggans, down the big hill by the school and skated at the outdoor rink when the city flooded the hill and the ball field.

As a kid my dad burned wood to heat the house and we didn’t burn wood because it looked pretty and smelled nice, we burned it to stay warm. To those of you that remember those days you can recollect how the temperature in the house ranged from 85 to 60 and words like, “close the damper before you cook us out” or “go out and get some more wood son, the fire is dying out” were uttered over and over again. Come night time the fire did die out and you awoke to see your breath and ran for the kitchen where mom had the range going and was in the process of heating the house up again, albeit one room at a time. You dressed by the stove and ate oatmeal for breakfast-- no pop tarts for us.

Then old age came along, the blood thinned out, the bones got brittle and pride or not it just wasn’t fun anymore. So you went down south for a few weeks and then it was a couple of months and now it’s late fall to early spring. Down here in the desert it still gets chilly at night. But no one talks about wind chill. When you talk about twenty below zero to the natives they just give you a pained look and one man told me they should just put yellow crime tape around the whole state come winter. My grandfather immigrated to Minnesota from Norway and when I asked him why not Florida or Arizona, he told me “this is where the wagon broke down” and shrugged his shoulders. Not sure if it was an explanation or an apology. I told my dad about fighting a large fire one night when it was -30. He told me I was lucky it wasn’t back in the 20’s when he grew up. “-30 was a damn sight colder back then,” he said.

But when all is said and done and the grim reaper comes a calling against my name, I’ll be right back here in the land of rosy cheeks and snotty noses, because I still have some of that Minnesota pride left in me. I just hope its not January.