Why I gave up Midwest winters (Part 3 of 3)

Seeing that winter is alive and kicking in the cooler climes across the plains and Great Lakes region, and another arctic blast is about to descend on Tennessee, I thought I’d end my trilogy of Winter Woe.  Here are two quick tales that finally quickened my spirit to move southward.

1) February of 1980, I’m living in Skokie, one of the first suburbs north of Chicago: We got socked with another massive blizzard and subsequent deep freeze.  It’s bad enough that the cramped city streets are further impeded by six to eight-foot-high gray walls (the Winter Wonderland effect turns a dingy yuck “color” for months) that line both sides of every thoroughfare…but it’s that fact that everything becomes so brittle from the sub-artic conditions that makes it nearly unbearable at times.

Take this particular morning when I went out for the twenty-minute ritual of warming-up and scraping the car.  This isn’t occasional; it’s every freaking day for months on end.  I had to load some equipment into the back of my stylish metallic brown AMC Hornet Hatchback. You don’t see these anymore.  They were sort of sawed-off versions of station wagons. Of course, you don’t see many family wagons anymore either (oh, for the days of Clark Griswold and his Family Truckster!). 

As I crunched out to the Brown Bomber, as it was affectionately dubbed, it seemed the air was even more biting than was the norm.  The thermometer outside my kitchen window had no red in it at all—the mercury had simply disappeared beneath the twenty degree below bottom marker. I put my key in the back hatch door, hearing the tiniest of tinklings as loose ice shards broke free from around the tumbler. When I pulled the handle and lifted the door, there was a sudden *snap* and the right hinge split.  Within a millisecond, not being able to bear all the weight on its own, the left hinge cracked and broke away.  Before I could say “Cranberry Cornucopia!” the entire one-hundred pound door was plummeting towards my feet.  Lurching both boots backwards, I started to slide on the icy pavement, and fell awkwardly forward onto the displaced fragment, bouncing first off the bumper, then dropping further onto the street.  It all happened at hummingbird speed.  One of those experiences that flashes so suddenly and unexpectedly that you find yourself in the aftermath before even knowing what occurred. Would’ve made a viral-worthy Youtube clip if anyone had been fortunate enough to be filming me at that precise moment.

Because it was so cold, I couldn’t tell if I was hurt or not.  Fortunately, no lacerations or bone damage—just a few bruises that manifested themselves in the coming days. The real pain came when I called the American Motors dealership to find out about when I could get a replacement door and hinges.  On the other end of the line the mechanic at the shop was laughing, saying, “Buddy, you are shit outta luck.  You are the seventeenth person today that has phoned-in with the same stupid problem.”

So, while muttering execrations against AMC and Detroit automakers in general, and lumping in the forces of nature for good measure, I spent an hour trying to rig some sort of temporary translucent covering out of cleaner bags and cardboard.  I’ll let you in a little secret, too: neither electrical nor duct tape holds particularly well to frozen metal.  So, several times each day for the next five weeks, I had to re-attach all variations of make-shift protection to the back of my rambler.  Often it would simply rip off and flap furiously while driving on the Edens Expressway, or detach altogether, and I would need to construct a new one from scratch.  Sometimes I was so pissed that I would drive the whole day with the back wide open.

It wasn’t about to get any warmer during that time either, and I can assure you that thin plastic does not serve as a stout form of insulation.  That auto was constantly frozen inside and out until I was finally able to get a long-backordered rear door installed.

2) The final straw was late January of 1982 while living in another northern suburb of Chicago: Glenview, right next to the Naval Air Station.  One more shrieking storm descended on Chicago. This was, I believe, the coldest I have ever experienced.  Wind chills reached -83 degrees.  We were warned repeatedly by the media to stay indoors.  If you had to go out, then one needed to make quite certain that you did not allow any exposed skin for longer than thirty seconds for fear of severe frostbite.

Those are the type weeks where you pull your battery out of your car each night and bring it in to keep it warm—it would turn into a block of ice otherwise.  Of course, most fuel and oil lines were frozen anyway, so it was often an exercise in futility unless you were fortunate enough to have a heated garage.

On Super Bowl Sunday, I vividly recall that my three roommates and I were bundled up in the living room watching the 49ers win their first over the Bengals.  Now, we weren’t just wearing sweatshirts and donning little shawls.  We were in full blizzard regalia: long underwear, layers of clothing, full coats, hats, and gloves while we were sitting inside the apartment. We had the furnace cranked-up to the limit at 88 degrees, but it was so frigid, that there was literally half an inch of ice on the inner part of every window, and I could see Brian, Andy, and Bob’s breath as we spoke with each other.

Through chattering teeth I determined that I had indeed had enough.  That summer, when the opportunity came along to move to Nashville, my deep hatred of those insane and unpredictable winters definitely entered into the quotient.  I loved so much about Chicago in the other three seasons, and certainly had (and still have) many dear friends there, but I can safely say I have had my fill of Thor’s Revenge.

Big Sky Country

Montana is called “Big Sky Country” and it is quite apt for that state and the rest of the rambling Great Plains of the U.S. and Canada.  Without the distractions of gleaming buildings, cell towers, high tension power lines, blaring signage, and swarming arteries jammed with garish SUV’s and hulking trucks cluttering my immediate view at ground level it’s much easier to be overtaken with the immensity of what is above me.

How I enjoy traversing out to an obscure spot on the map, scaling an unnamed hump, and soaking in a 360 degree unobstructed view.  But it’s usually not the terrestrial that wows me—it’s the ever-changing terra firma that dominates the scene.

And if you hear the wind blow

The breeze can catch your eye

And if you feel the sunlight

Straight from the sky

Away from the noise and the madness

All you have to do is pray

(Glass Harp, “Look in the Sky,” Glass Harp, 1970)

Early on a summer day in remote Nebraska the horizons are an opaque blue that grow to deeper azure as your eyes ascend higher. It is so gradual and yet so obvious.  Lying still on my back, I watch patiently as time progresses.  Early on, the canopy is crystal clear, but as the day unfolds the moisture begins to accumulate, and wisps evolve into clouds, and then often dissipate for no discernable reason.  It’s as if an invisible artist moistens a canvas then decides to wipe clean what was just painted.

These ever-changing puffs seem to move at a relaxed pace in the morning.  One the size of a small county takes the shape of a hand, with fingers extending for miles.  But within 20 minutes it simply evaporates into nothingness, except for the tip of the ring finger.  From whence do they come…and where do they go?

The immensity of it is so very good for my soul. Contrary to what I would often think, being made to feel small by the sweep of God’s workmanship—even the most temporal—gives me much needed perspective.

The sunshine in mountains sometimes lost

the river can disregard the cost

and melt in the sky warmth when you die

were we ever warmer on that day a million miles away

we seemed from all of eternity

(Yes, “South Side of the Sky,” Fragile, 1973)

I recall in South Dakota seeing every type of cloud imaginable in just one scene.  Hazy billows to the north with little broods of baby puffs in tow. To the east were celestial saucers interspersed with serrated cotton-like feathers that were becoming heavy and gray on their underside.  To the southeast was a heavenly sea of rippling waves moving towards some undetermined shore.  Beneath, it cast shadows that skimmed across the vast fields like gossamer sheets.

To the south was a mass that resembled the underside of a gaseous crab treading water…snuggling low as if trying to hatch. I saw a quarter of a rainbow glistening beneath an already misting cloud.  It was that time late in each day where the rain often falls in violent displays.

To the northwest were pulsating amoeba-like globules with a singular orb glowing from within.  The sun works in concert with these heavenly hordes to create the most amazing non-stop dramas over our heads if we would just take the time to look up. As I craned my neck backwards I saw cotton tufts dashing by whose bottoms were flattened evenly across an unseen barometric glass ceiling less than a mile above me.

But it was to the west where the real show was beginning.  Aeriform battalions were marshalling forces for a late-afternoon siege…seemingly in ordered cadence and on the march.  They were going to clash with a Gibraltar-like thunderhead mushrooming in the southwest. Between the two combatants the open air was being closed off, with sunlight smearing the edges.  Virgas were beginning to sweep downward like tentacles from a jellyfish. Lightning shards crackled in the distance.

The clouds prepare for battle

In the dark and brooding silence

Bruised and sullen storm clouds

Have the light of day obscured

Looming low and ominous

In twilight premature

Thunderheads are rumbling

In a distant overture...

Just when it appeared that they had completely smothered any solar intervention, suddenly spectacular radiating pillars perhaps forty miles long burst through a crevasse creating a Jacob’s Ladder that would put even the most powerful photon torpedoes in Gene Rodenberry’s imagination to shame. 

All at once, the clouds are parted

Light streams down in bright unbroken beams...

Follow men's eyes as they look to the skies

The shifting shafts of shining weave the fabric of their dreams...

(Rush, “Jacob’s Ladder,” Permanent Waves, 1981)

But those late day melees with all the accompanying salvos rolling and reverberating across the flatlands are often swept away in mere moments…and after the rain dampens the heat that has built throughout the day, all that atmospheric bombast disperses before me over the course of the next hour.  The sky is once again cleansed…and so is my cluttered heart.

It’s all so lofty, in the truest sense of the word.  It’s ethereal…and yet deeply resonates within me.  In all the non-stop energy of the wild blue yonder, I sense a profound purposefulness.  Practicality is addressed through the cycles of wind, rain, and sun.  But the soul is also replenished by the vaporous vitality of it all…and the sneak peak at what’s to come once I’m finally on the other side. 

You made the climb up to the crest
Seeing it all ahead of the rest
And your expression showed the wonder of the place
Looking westward with the sunlight on your face

In the wide-open sweet someday
Climbing over the ridge top to finally see the view
All of us go there alone
Crossing over to home
In the vista
The wide-open sweet someday
The wide open vista

(David Wilcox, “Vista,” Vista, 2006)