Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Snow plus a Bruce Longstreet story
Major snowstorm in Central Jersey yesterday, Elizabeth was right in the middle of a 100 mile wide storm from the southwest, a foot of snow. But we're also in a sustained cold spell that could last ten days or more with hardly a nudge above freezing, & those do not occur every winter in Central Jersey. Plus the first long-range forecast put another storm in the vicinity of Superbowl weekend. Opinion here is mixed on if that would be a good or bad thing, worth a snowstorm to see what happens.
My friend Bruce Longstreet would tell a story about his first winter in Vermont. He was convinced Vermont was his true home but underestimated winter in Montpelier. He parked his car in a public lot before a snowstorm & when he went to retrieve it afterward discovered it had been plowed under & was essentially encased in a block of ice. Rather than chip it out, he decided to wait until it thawed. But Montpelier was not Jersey, where long spells of subfreezing temperatures are actually uncommon. He walked for quite awhile.
Bruce would have been unbelieving then if someone had informed him he was really temperamentally suited to the climate around Mendocino County California, & by nature a haiku poet. Certainly I wouldn't have believed it. I think maybe one winter soured Vermont for him, but it took a few years for him to admit it to himself, he had so long dreamed of living there.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
My friend Bruce Longstreet would tell a story about his first winter in Vermont. He was convinced Vermont was his true home but underestimated winter in Montpelier. He parked his car in a public lot before a snowstorm & when he went to retrieve it afterward discovered it had been plowed under & was essentially encased in a block of ice. Rather than chip it out, he decided to wait until it thawed. But Montpelier was not Jersey, where long spells of subfreezing temperatures are actually uncommon. He walked for quite awhile.
Bruce would have been unbelieving then if someone had informed him he was really temperamentally suited to the climate around Mendocino County California, & by nature a haiku poet. Certainly I wouldn't have believed it. I think maybe one winter soured Vermont for him, but it took a few years for him to admit it to himself, he had so long dreamed of living there.
Labels: New Jersey, sports, weather
