Wintry Mixes and Arctic Vortexes
“It’s supposed to get bad this weekend,” Milt says. “Looks like we’re going to be iced in for at least a week.”
Ten minutes later. “There’s a possibility it’s going to miss North Alabama totally. Michigan’s gonna be under fifteen feet of snow, though.”
Milt sits in his Catnapper Laz-E-Boy, a very comfortable command center for the world’s laziest weatherman.
I’ve scarcely added a splash of pineapple juice to my jelly glass of coconut rum before he adds “no, Alabama is definitely going to get the full brunt of that arctic vortex coming up from Texas. Or at the very least, a wintry mix. You’ll probably need to stop by Food World and pick up six loaves of bread, four gallons of milk, bananas, and some of that Milos sweet tea. Might want to check the toilet paper reserves as well.”
I don’t need to check fuck all. He’s still got a garage full of hoarded toilet paper from the Covid days. There remains a stockpile of single ply beneath the house that dates back to the pre Y2K days.
“It reminds me of the blizzard of ’62,” Milt continues. “You remember that?”
“How the fuck would I remember that, Milt. I was born in ’74. I scarcely remember anything anyway on account of all that childhood trauma I experienced.”
Milt, of course, doesn’t hear a fucking word I say, just waits for his turn to speak, and since I don’t enjoy talking to my eighty-year-old father-in-law, it’s always his turn to speak.
“I went to see the Detroit Lions play at Tiger Stadium that winter. So cold I had to wear two snow mobile suits. One on top of the other. You don’t know cold. I wonder if the temperature is gonna drop that far below when the polar obliteration hits half the country.”
As I sit here and write this, now, it’s 43 degrees, and my immediate surroundings are being attacked by a light drizzle. The ten loaves of bread sitting on the kitchen counter are only going to be fit for toast before too long. The milk—I’ll just add blueberries and spoon it into my mouth.
Maybe it’s snowing somewhere. Maybe it’s the north getting hit with whatever the meteorological bywords have been created to send the elderly into a grocery-glomming frenzy. In the conservative leaning Michigan, it’s merely a comforting blanket of snow. In Minnesota, it’s being coined an icy annihilation.
When I emerge from my study to refresh my pancreas tickler, Milt vacillates between minute-by-minute weather updates and a Tivo’d women’s basketball game he recorded last season.
“Still raining outside?”
“Yep.”
“It’s all going to turn to ice tonight when the temperature drops.”
“I’ll be damned.”
Alabama is far too conservative a southern state for any meaningful pockets of ice to form and cause any real havoc. Of course, when ice materializes on the streets down here, most people baton down the hatches and shelter in place. We’re not a willful people despite the proliferation of “Don’t Tread on Me” flags and NRA donations. The guns only come out when there’s a soft-eyed doe that needs to be taken down with prejudice.
Anyone down here will tell you though, blowing a whistle at a patch of ice will never make it any less dangerous.
I don’t know. I never thought I’d live to see such times when such a massive onslaught of wintry mixes and arctic vortexes would descend upon this country. I’ve always been a summer patriot. Give me the blistering sun suspended three feet above my head, my diabetes numbed toes buried in the Florida sand like so many American heads. Give me Arnie’s hotdogs all the way for lunch, and mahi mahi tacos with cilantro and lime for dinner as I watch the setting sun cast brilliant hues across the ocean waves. That’s the America I strive to inhabit.
I’m too old, too committed to the accumulation of comfort to become a winter soldier. In my idiot youth I thought nothing of running the mean streets of The Region regardless of how disastrous the weather was. At the first sign of frigid inclemency, I’d layer every article of clothing I owned and race out into the hoary darkness, meeting like-minded kids and basically acting like a fool, flinging snowballs indiscriminately and hanging off the back bumpers of vehicles as they maneuvered the icy side streets of Hammond, Indiana.
Those were good times, and the last time I confronted ice on the streets. Soon enough, the salt trucks would appear, and the ice would melt away. It was just a matter of time and superior force. One thing for sure, the wintry mixes and arctic vortexes never left on their own accord. One had to apply heat.
I think the way Ukrainians handle their harsh winters could be an excellent template for anyone looking to brandish a snow shovel against inclement weather.
“Whether the rain freezes or not,” Milt says. “I don’t think I’m going to move far from this Catnapper.”
And why should the old bastard do anything when he has me to fetch his bread? He voted for this three times.
I have a Catnapper of my own. I won’t be using it tonight. I’m just going to fling another column into the void and await the hour I’m to return to the factory, forever a senseless cog mired in an irrational machine.
Karl Koweski is a displaced Region Rat now living in rural Alabama. He writes when his pen allows it. He’s a husband to a lovely wife and father to some fantastic kids. He collects pop culture ephemera. On most days he prefers Flash Gordon to Luke Skywalker and Neil Diamond to Elvis Presley.
THE POLISH HAMMER POETRY CORNER is a weekly column, posted each Tuesday morning.
