I’m not complaining; snow is part of the deal here on the Jagged Edge of America.
My friends, some already living their “best life” in The Villages, have intermittently given me polite admonitions over my few years spent in the sixties—the age, not the decade. The claim is that I seem like a guy who would enjoy socializing in the faux town squares.
They’ve forgotten that I didn’t even go to their summer barbeques when we were youngsters, choosing to sit in my own dooryard or go to camp to split firewood.
I’m all up for a warm vacation, four days, no more. My bones can’t take warm weather— my skin either.
You can’t be good at your job as a Mainer if you take too much time away from brutal temperatures and snow shoveling if you don’t want to lose your edge or the bitter anger that molds your core when you clear a deck at seven p.m. to find our upon rising that it snowed three more inches overnight.
Outastatahs often ask, “How do you cope with a fourteen-inch storm?” I say, “You don’t.”
While the strain on your back is a little more, the number of scooping repetitions is the same as three or four inches. The same square footage must be cleared, so you do it.
Small storms can get you down—this week, we are handling about four of them. That is if the forecasting weather guessers are correct. They miss a few. It’s a big state, and there is no way they can accurately forecast the entire thing while doing a good job for the constituents in their limited viewing areas.
The advent of cable television brings us weather from distant locations within our borders. It gives us something else to complain about over a cup or five of bad coffee.
First off, if I have made my chops writing about Maine life, I can’t be in Florida, sipping fruity concoctions and ramming other people with my golf cart.
This life, the actual Maine life, is not the Maine life displayed each weekend on fluffy television shows, with people who think all scallops come pre-wrapped in bacon when harvested.
This Maine life is where we coat our vehicle undercarriages with Fluid Film or Woolwax to keep away next winter’s rust. And we do it ourselves, sometimes staining our Sunday-go-to-church jeans to the point that we can only wear them to Wednesday prayer meetings in the winter.
It’s Maine life that finds us asking Jerry and Mona, the neighbors, if we can do them a solid by sawing up the fresh deadfall maple after a storm so we can burn it in the woodstove this winter—”But I’ll split the proceeds with you ’cause it came off your property” kinda Maine life.
“I bet that beast is a whole cord or so.”
So I can’t move to The Villages, and I certainly can’t buy a place in regular Florida as the homeowner’s insurance costs as much as a new sixty-four-inch snowblower for the back of the Kubota tractor. And that price includes the remote-controlled snow chute so I can direct most of the snow into the neighbor’s backyard. That, my friends, is cheap satisfaction that keeps on giving.
Try that when you live close enough to sip a fruity concoction directly from the neighbor’s frosted glass using only a short straw after raising the sash closest to their screened-in lanai.
No, I have to stay here. I signed on for the full ride when I exited my mother’s womb in ’63. As she recalls, it was during the spring thaw.
I will take a warm vacation when time and budget allow. I’ll pay for it, of course. Maybe in May when my Significant One forces me to do it so she can deal with the rest of this, and the rest of me. I am no Cary Grant. Even that comparison should tell you how far I am behind the times.
And you’ll never hear a Mainer claim they are FROM Florida, no matter how long they live there. It’s against all state laws. That’s why you can’t claim you are from Maine if you’re not—someone with oil-soaked jeans will call you out publicly.
You don’t deserve the summer if you can’t stand the winter. I’ve got to go shovel again.
From the Jagged Edge of America, I remain,
TC
*Thank you to all who have selected to support the pages (Facebook and here) through the BuyMeACoffee App. You are the unsung hero of the arts. Well, my art. Thank you. TC