Lost in the Snow
I’m not a person who likes the cold and snow. I am an avowed couch potato when the snow flies and the cold winds blow. Sometimes I am lured outside to keep my driveway clear of snow, but the snowplows are just as determined to close it back up and placing an impassable mound of packed snow and ice at the mouth of my driveway. When my wife was still alive and my kids were living at home, I always made sure the driveway was shoveled and there was at least half a tank of gas in the car. I was never able to be sure there wouldn’t be an emergency. Back then there were no twenty-four hour gas stations if you ran low and had to drive any distance at all.
There were many nights that I would shovel my driveway with snow falling steadily. The impact of the near silence was refreshing. The noise of the tumbling thick snowflakes would make a soft shushing sound as they fell in the darkness around me had a calming effect.
I’d never make it in Alaska with the frigid temperatures. The harsh wind and the potential for a case of frostbite have no appeal for me. There is too much of relying on myself for me to survive there. I am a procrastinator as well as a couch potato. My wife Cindy Morrison Beck labeled me as mechanically retarded and I would respond, “I’m mechanically dyslexic.” Somehow that slight change in the title made it more palatable, but I must agree I am mechanically challenged.
I’ve lived in Pennsylvania most of my life, but as a corpsman in the United States Navy, I was stationed in Orlando, Florida after spending a winter in Great Lakes basic training and then in Keflavik, Iceland. I was far from satisfied with the weather in those places; dealing with frigid temperatures at Great Lakes, mosquitoes and hurricanes while in Florida, or the winter darkness and snow storms in Iceland…no thank you. When I was being discharged in August, I was sent to Philadelphia. The heat and humidity I endured there in the un-air conditioned barracks were stifling. I guess it all comes back to the old phrase, “There’s no place like home.”