Where Have All The Snowflakes Gone?

This column originally apeared on Sunday, March 16, 2008

It is 9 a.m. Saturday and the temperature is hovering in the low-50s. A little while ago I saw a fellow walking down South Church Street in West Chester who was not wearing a coat, just a shirt and some jeans, and he looked perfectly comfortable. When I left the apartment, my neighbor greeted me as she was arranging the flower pots on her porch with a cheery, “Happy Spring!”

I remember when it used to snow in March. Check that. I remember when it used to snow in February and March. The first winter I spent in West Chester, the skies dumped 22 inches of snow on the borough on Feb. 11. My friend Jamie and I watched the snow inch its way up the side of my Volkswagen Beetle until you could not see the door handles anymore. Then we went out and made snow angels in the drifts that had closed down the town to all but foot traffic and snowmobiles.

But those days are seemingly gone. We have not had a really good snowfall here in February or March for years.

Now, it’s about 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, and the temperature is inching toward 60 degrees. The fellow whom I saw walking down South Church an hour and a half ago returned wearing just a T-shirt, shorts and a breezy smile. My neighbor was pruning the dead blossoms from her gladiolas and greeted me with a cheery, “If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring?”

I checked the records. It usually snows in March at least once, sometimes twice. Fifteen years ago, I’d lived in my apartment building for a decade when the skies dumped 10 inches of snow on the borough on March 13 and overnight into March 14. My car got stuck in the deep snow that clogged the alley behind my house, and I had to call a tow truck to pull me out.

In 2005, 5 inches of snow lay on the ground when the morning of March 1 dawned. A week later, another inch showed up. It was fun taking snapshots of the ankle-deep drifts outside my door and walking to work straight down the middle of West Market Street without a car in sight. Can we hope that any of those days come back?

I just checked the time and temperature at 2:30 p.m. Saturday here in West Chester and it’s a sunny 85 degrees. My walkabout friend just passed by wearing swim trunks and a Hawaiian shirt open at the collar, presumably to show of his tan. When I stepped outside my neighbor was mopping the sweat from her brow, cheerily singing, “We’re havin’ a heat wave, a tropical heat wave …”

What I miss about the snows of March isn’t the shoveling or the scraping or the slipping or the slush that arrives later. It’s the few hours after the snow stops falling when everything seems suspended and people get outside of their everyday skins. Strangers help push cars out from snowbanks and people stop each other on the street to marvel at what Mother Nature has wrought. There’s a sense that the rules of caution are postponed and you can go out of your way to be friendly without encouraging suspicion.

And you can make snow angels in the drifts without embarrassment.

A Diner Sort of Guy

This appeared on Sunday, March 18, 2007

Had lunch the other day at Hooters.

(Pause.)

Now that I‘ve got your attention, I want to elaborate.

There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for what I was doing eating a meal at perhaps the world‘s cheesiest male-oriented restaurant chain, and by cheese I‘m not referring to the Swiss or the Camembert.

My friend had suggested that we get together on Thursday to catch some of the opening round of the NCAA Men‘s Basketball Tournament, but because our normal noontime meeting spot doesn‘t have wall-to-wall television sets we‘d need to pick a different venue.

Hooters, apparently, does have wall-to-wall television sets, sets which are permanently tuned to whatever sporting event is happening at that particular time, anywhere in the world.

My friend knows this because he‘s been there before, primarily, it seems, to watch the opening round of the aforementioned basketball tournament. There may also be some association in his mind between semi-naked men trying desperately to score and the whole Hooters concept, but never mind.

He‘s been to Hooters before, as I said, and he allowed when we got there that if Hooters had been extant while he was in his 20s, his life today would have been demonstrably different than it is, most likely for the worse. I imagine he meant that instead of being happily married with four delightful children, a good job, a house on a hill and a voter registration card with the word ”Democrat“ displayed prominently on it, he would probably be living in a rented room, jobless and near destitution, with only a Hooters' Girls calendar on the wall to keep him company.

Most likely he‘d also have voted for Bush. All four times.

I hadn‘t been to Hooters before, and he could see the discomfort with the whole situation in my face when we got a cheery ”Hi there, guys!“ from our waitress. He‘s pretty much used to my various states of discomfort, but this time he wasn‘t having any of it.

"You‘d be honest with yourself if you just acknowledged the fact that you really enjoy having food and drink served to you by a perky blonde/brunette/redhead in a tank top and nylon orange shorts," he told me. "Just look inside yourself," he said, "and respond to your inner … something or other. Let go and admit that the whole thing is fun."

But I don‘t see myself as a Hooters sort of guy.

I‘m more of a diner sort, and have been ever since my father sat me down at the counter at the Toddle House on Clifton Avenue in Cincinnati when I was 8 and ordered me a cheeseburger and a cup of hot chocolate, while he flirted with the 65-year-old waitress, who was probably named Irene.

Since then, I‘ve always tried my best to establish a friendly working relationship with all of the waitresses that have served me on a regular basis over the years, and have succeeded more times than not in developing a server-servee friendship not based on too much artifice. Also, without orange shorts on either side of the counter.

I‘d like to keep it that way. Besides, the local Hooters is in Concordville, and I don‘t do Delaware County very well.