Last week’s blog was “First Ice.” This week’s blog is “First Snow.”
I moved to San Francisco the winter of 1981 and immediately took a job at a North Face store. My very first customer was a man who wanted to buy a down Gore-tex jacket. His request confused me, as I didn’t even know that such a jacket existed. If the weather was warm enough to rain, why would anyone wear a coat made with down? Fortunately Mary, another clerk in the store and a native to San Francisco, heard the man’s request and brought the man to our sizable collection of down Gore-tex jackets.
It took me the month of January that year to realize that down Gore-tex isn’t a crazy purchase if a person lives in San Francisco. The temperatures there don’t get below freezing, but the cold rain and dampness makes it feel like they do. Mark Twain said, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” I disagree with Twain’s assessment of San Francisco’s summers, but the most uncomfortable winter I ever spent might be my first winter there. When I moved to the Bay Area, I’d already lived in the northern cities of Green Bay, Madison, Boston, and Minneapolis. I’d be willing to bet that San Francisco hospitals treat more cases of hypothermia than any of those places.
For the last couple of years, we’ve been experiencing San Francisco-type winters in La Crosse, and I don’t like them here any more here than I did in California. If I am to endure the dead of winter, I want ice on the lakes and temperatures so low that I need mittens instead of gloves. And I want snow. This morning I sit just inside my living room window and watch the first real snowfall of the year. There is already five inches on the ground, and large fluffy flakes continue to fall.
Two of my neighbors are out shoveling snow while the snow is still coming down. I am trying to remember if they are same neighbors who water their lawns in the rain. I don’t think that they are, so I assume that they are shoveling snow for the joy of it. People who derive pleasure from shoveling snow do so only when the snow is light and fluffy. No one likes clearing pavement when the snow/slush is wet and heavy.
I did shovel for five minutes first thing this morning. Jack needed to pee, but he wouldn’t go out until I cleared the steps and shoveled him a path. If you’ve ever seen a dog romp in the snow after the season’s first snowfall, that wasn’t my dog.
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