It doesn’t snow here often, but when it does, you can rest safely knowing my wife’s grandpa Lowry is on patrol. When the Department of Transportation snow plows get to our community, the plow drivers can just stop awhile and go sledding or participate in a discussion on the merits of marshmallows in hot chocolate while warming themselves around a bonfire. Really, they can do whatever they want for 15 minutes because Lowry, with the use of a box blade and the tractor’s front-in-loader, has already plowed the roads and remains on patrol for further accumulation. The only road he spares is Clay Hill, a steep hill where local children can break their first bone in a safe environment with adult supervision. While huddled in a  shivering mass, many parents pay such close attention to their sledding children that they can be heard encouraging their offspring with shouts likes, “Great ride, Ricky, you got a lot of air!” as Ricky and his plastic trash can lid dangle from the top of a pine tree.

This past weekend, Thomas, my offspring, experienced snow for the first time. He inherited my general hatred for frozen precipitation, as evidenced by the picture above. Not that I want to teach Thomas to hate, but if he was going to hate somebody, I’d be ok with him hating snowmen. 

Bad things happen when it snows here. Take, for instance, the time I woke up to an explosion and a blinding glow in the window. My first thought was Kim Jong-un’s missile program had greatly progressed, though his targeting system needed some work because his warhead landed at the wrong white house. When I peeked through the blinds, I saw the true culprit was a snapped powerline laying across the driveway, spewing flames and sparks. We were without power for seven days–in an old farmhouse with defunct fireplaces and walls that lacked any insulation. Well, mostly without power–by day three, I got a great deal on a price-gouged generator. 

Then there was the time I raised a dozen day-old dairy bulls in an arctic freeze. The dairy farmer couldn’t find anyone else dumb enough to take the calves, and he told me he’d throw in two sickly ones for free. To be honest, I couldn’t tell which ones in particular were the sickly ones, as our barn soon became a triage unit for scouring pneumonic calves. Several scouring viruses, like rotavirus, can also infect humans, so by the end of the week, while trying to keep calves from keeling over in the barn, I  had to frequently race back to the bathroom in the house, all while trying to delicately balance speed and intestinal control. 

Then there was the other time when a pipe burst underneath the house and the other time a joy-riding truck  skidded off the road and demolished part of my newly-built fence and the other time my wife made me watch the movie Frozen and I had that stupid “do-you-want-to-build-a-snowman” song stuck in my head for three eternities. 

At this point, I realize this post has devolved into a continuation of last week’s post where I tried to cancel February. My petition didn’t make much headway with the calendar authorities, and to add insult to injury, our local meteorologists are now calling for freezing rain this weekend. So if you don’t hear from me next week, you’ll know I didn’t survive whatever bad thing blew in with the ice storm, or else I unlocked the secrets of human hibernation and you can expect another blog post whenever ambient outdoor temperatures rouse me from a prolonged dream of Kokomo.