The Weather

02/14/2007

I am sitting here in my office listening to the wind howl and scream outside my window as it redistributes the snow that fell last night and this morning.  The main drag in Beautiful Downtown Berkeley Springs (aka The Town of Bath), WV, population 711, is Washington Street.  It is damn near deserted, save the occasional tractor-trailer and State Highway Department snowplow…and, of course, stupid (I mean not-so-smart) people, such as I, who would attempt to drive in the slop which lay atop the roadways and byways of this lush state.  The parking lot of the convenience store just across Washington Street from my office is bare, except for the employee’s vehicles.  All the smart people are in their homes snuggled up in their jammies and sipping hot chocolate with a gooey marshmallow floating in it as they watch Dr. Phil dispense his wisdom.  But not me, I am in my office doing office stuff just waiting for The Nancy to call me from her office so we can head for the farm.

Our house is one half mile off the paved road.  The snow is only about six to eight inches deep, but even with a four-wheel drive Jeep the trip from the house to the hard-surfaced road was an adventure.  As we were making the drive around noon today my thoughts kept drifting to “what ifs?” I had all these visions of The Nancy and me and Jeep going off the road and over into the woods – of course these woods have a drop off of about fifty feet down an embankment.  Definitely not a place The Nancy would want to have to push the Jeep from.  It was a vision I had to block from my head just so I wouldn’t create the reality.

The snow lying on the fields around our home is very pretty.  It lends a certain romance to this Valentine’s Day, but not necessarily to my day.  I detest snow (notice I did not say hate). I lived in Upstate New York for four winters back in the Sixties.  That experience gave me enough snow for life.  I did not enjoy it.  The news programs this week have fun speaking of the amount of snow mother nature has dumped on Oswego County, New York, now about twelve feet of it.  The weather forecasts say that county could get another two to three feet today.  God bless the people that live there.  They can have it.  I think the people who live in those colder climates are nuts.  Hell, we have only had about ten inches so far this year.  I think it is about ten more inches then we needed, certainly ten inches more than I would have wanted.

I really hate snow, and that’s all I have to say about that…