On Why I Am No Snowman

On Why I Am the No Snowman
Preface
It is 11 December, 2011 as I write this and officially winter here where I live in the United States; so, brrrr right? Nope. It is 76 F, in Mandeville, outside New Orleans, Louisiana. The humidity is low, and the sun is shining down on us from a blue sky with an occasional cloud.
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When I was a youngster I lived in the far northern reaches of the United States on the Canadian border in one of the snowiest places in the country. In 1955 my aunt, with whom I lived, bought a car. But we had no garage in which to keep it off the street for the snow plow’s passage or to protect it from the ravages of winter. So she rented one from one person or another, often a widow who did not drive and had no need of it but welcomed the extra income.
It fell to me to shovel the driveway. It seemed to me she always chose a garage that was about 20 kilometers from the street. I used one of those flat snow shovels with the wide pan-like blade. There were no residential snow blowers then and if there were it didn’t matter for me because we could not have afforded one and besides I was young and healthy.
There is snow and there is snow. Some is fluffy and defies the shovel. Some is wet and clings to the shovel. Some is chunky ice slabs frozen to the sidewalk and street. Often, without exaggeration, we had snow banks seven or eight feet high on either side of the driveway. The most frustrating, fit of temper expletive laden reaction elicited from me when snow shoveling was to reach the curb just as the damned (excuse) road grader passed and threw up a windrow of heavy snow and ice chunks knee high across the opening to the street.
Part and parcel with snow is cold. Cold so one can feel the frost form on nose hair. Foolish child tongue stuck to metal cold; makes the snow squeak under your ambling feet cold. Makes your forehead ache and earlobes sting cold; toes numbing cold. Human beings are not meant to live in that sort of cold. Even Canadians hate the cold and fill up hundreds of Florida trailer parks in the winter. By the time I finished shoveling my scarf would be covered with crystalized exhaled breath and my lip with frozen mucus because my nose ran so in the cold. And I worked up a sweat which was ok until I stopped shoveling then it became a super-efficient refrigerant turning my pale hide cold inside the clothes that were supposed to be keeping me warm.
I learned to hate snow. I don’t say that as a criticism of anyone who chooses to or is compelled by life circumstances to live in snow country. But I hate snow. When I went to boot camp in January 1961 I was allowed a choice of the northeast coast of the U.S., in New Jersey or California on the west coast. You’re right. I chose California. If I had chosen New Jersey in the middle of winter over California (at least mythical California) they would have been justified in sending me home for an idiot.
In 1966 I returned from Vietnam, hot, humid, sweaty Vietnam. Again allowed a choice of locations I chose New Orleans, Louisiana;, hot, humid, sweaty, hurricane devastated and flood prone. New Orleans is at 30 degrees north latitude. If you trace the 30th parallel across the Atlantic it will pass into North Africa and the vicinity of Cairo, Egypt. Before the year was out I married a New Orleans woman.
You may be thinking, now he is going to crow, “No snow!” But nope, you’d be wrong. We have had snow storms in New Orleans. Let’s see, almost 2012; ah yes indeed we had snow about eight years ago, a dusting that continued for what, gosh five maybe ten minutes! It was awful. Schools closed. Businesses shuttered the doors. Cars caromed off one another. And we get cold too in the winter. Once or twice last winter the temperature dipped to freezing for a good hour or more.
So the scales for me is on the one side boiling oppressive heat, steam bath humidity, hurricanes and threats of hurricanes , torrential rains too, I forgot to mention before. On the other side, snow; that’s it just snow. No contest, I choose no snow; I’m like the old 7-up commercial, the “un-cola.” I am the un-snowman.
In 1977 we moved into our new home where we would raise our sons. It was a “spec” house and no landscaping or sod had been put down in the yard. In the suburbs of New Orleans so-called “river sand” is used to fill lots before the slabs are poured (no basements here, water table too close to the surface). We also had roll over curbs. In heavy rain the sand would wash over the curb into the gutters along the street. We had a snow shovel left from earlier years when my service ignored my sensibilities and sent us to New London, Connecticut in the northeast.
One day I decided to use the shovel with its wide scooping blade to pick up sand and toss it back in the yard; not having sod down yet to retain it. (This is the part that warms my heart and makes it wonderful to live here.) My neighbor a couple of houses down, a New Orleans native, probably never been north of Interstate 10, came over and asked, “What kind of a shovel is that?” He could not have pleased me more if he had sung his question in high church Gregorian chant. I said with a huge smile, “It’s a snow shovel!” And I thought to myself, Oh I am so going to like it here.
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