Don't Be Scared Of A Little Snow

It snowed last night.

And this morning. And now this afternoon. In total we got nearly a foot. It is supposed to snow more tonight.

The radio says the roads are very bad. The expressway is like an ice rink. The authorities are asking us not to drive.

I was outside shoveling the driveway when Darlene came out with the phone.

My co-worker Julia called to tell me that she and the other Staff Association members think we should cancel the Children’s Christmas party.

I looked out the window. A pickup truck went sliding sideways by our house. He straightened himself out and slid the other way.

“I agree”, I replied. After hanging up I called our major AM radio station. Everyone in Windsor knows this is the station to listen to for local news and snow cancellations. While I tried to get through the busy line – Darlene submitted the cancellation notice request through their news tips website.

Shortly afterwards I heard our cancellation announcement crackle over the radio.

I went back out to finish shoveling.

And I started thinking about my Uncle Fred.

I had lived with Uncle Fred’s family when I moved back to Canada.

I was twenty-three and the year was 1985. I was living in an apartment with my brother Paul in Baton Rouge. I had decided that summer that I was going to move back to Canada.

I gave my notice at work. I was a night manager at a grocery store – and the store was closing down. It seemed to be a better idea to move to Canada and go back to school, rather than live a Janice Joplin song and be “busted flat in Baton Rouge”. So as Christmas approached, I packed up what I owned and stuffed it into my Mazda 626.

Paul and I spent Christmas at my Mom and Dads that year. The understanding was that I would go back to Canada – get this degree – and move back down south – this time to Pensacola – and start a real career.

I remember that Christmas morning because Paul and I woke up and played our traditional round of golf before we opened presents. We started on the 13th tee outside their back door, and played around to number twelve – where we came in for breakfast and opened our presents.

Two mornings later – my car still loaded with all my possessions and clubs squeezed back into my inventory – I kissed my Mom and Dad good bye and started my Drive up I-65 through Alabama – then I-64 across Kentucky and Tennessee, over to I-75 that would take me up into Michigan.

The first day was a breeze. I had the windows down, and the tapes in my cassette player blaring loud. I made it to Dayton, Ohio. It was raining and dark – so I decided to pull over for the night.

The next morning I stepped out of my motel room, and nearly broke my neck on the ice. The rain had frozen. It was cold.

I had crossed the Mason-Dixon line.

I filled my car up with gas and started out onto I-75. About 45 minutes up the road, a gust of wind grabbed my car, and slid me across 4 lanes of expressway, into a deep ditch – just missing a cement drain pipe.

I spent the rest of the morning hiking to a gas station to get a guy with a tow truck to haul me out of the ditch and put me back on the road. As he did – he tried to sell me some winter tires. I declined.

I did not cross the border into Canada in Detroit. I did not enter into Canada in Windsor. Instead I rode I-94 north of Detroit to a little town called Port Huron. I arrived at the empty border crossing expecting to be searched and have my car taken apart.

I crossed the Bridge and reached the Canadian customs booth in Sarnia.

“Citizenship?” asked the customs officer.

I held up my green card. A plastic card that had a picture of me at the age of three. “Canadian” I answered.

“How long are you staying?” he asked.

“Until I’m done school” I replied and briefly explained my educational plans and agenda.

He smiled and replied “Welcome home”.

That has always stuck with me.

I looked at the road ahead. I saw none. It was all white. I looked back at the officer “One thing please, where is the road?”

“See those little white posts?” he asked in reply, “the road is about 3 meters to the left of those:,

“Oh”, I replied. “Welcome to Canada, Fred” I thought to myself.

It got easier as I drove on. In my little Mazda 626 with everything I owned in the car. I could see other tire tracks, and I could see the edge of the road. But I drove very slowly.

It was really snowing and the roads were being closed behind me. My perception of what “bad” meant kept expanding as the day progressed – and now I felt I understood what “bad” meant.

Every twenty yards or so, a one or two foot high snow drift would appear. And now I felt comfortable to just blast through them. I did this for about an hour. And now I was getting close. I had made my way to Perth County Road 11. I was simply trying to find the concession Uncle Fred’s farm was on.

I thought I saw it, and pulled into the snow drift that fronted the concession gravel road – Boosh – I smashed through and drove up the gravel road – only to really see the farm on the next concession up – looking across the fields. I turned around, and blasted through the drift again. Back on the road, I traveled up to the next concession.

Boosh – I blasted through the drift at the front of the concession.

But this was different. I didn’t come through the other side. Instead I drove to the top of it, and my car sunk down into the drift – which was not a drift. The snow was easily five feet deep all the way down the concession.

I sat there in my little Mazda 626 – with Louisiana license plates on the front and back. I sat there and wondered how I would get down the concession to the farmhouse I could see all lit up about half a mile down the road.

I almost made it.

I flashed my headlights – and turned my car off. I was just about to get out of the car and literally swim the snow to the farmhouse. That’s when I saw the two snowmobiles – and they were coming straight at me.

“How’s goin eh?” said the first – a kid I would later know to be Jim.

“I’m stuck” I smiled.

“Yer stuck alright. Where yer goin?” asked the toque (tuke) and parka clad Jim.

“To the Brill’s farm” I replied, “and I almost made it”.

“I’ll go tell Fred yer here, wait here” said Jim. “Who do I say’s coming?”

“Fred Brill”, I said. “He looked at me. My Uncle Fred and I do have the same name.

“Okay den”, and hopped back on his snowmobile and away he sped.

Shortly after, Fred appeared with the John Deere tractor with the snow blower attachment on front. He came blowing right at me. He climbed out of the cab and waded over to me.

He was smiling as happy as could be to see something funny like me and my southern car stuck in the snow.

“Jimmy says Fred Brill’s comin to visit me” he laughed – those big old teeth grinning like he couldn’t be happier.

“It’s snowing” I said.

“Tis, tis so” said Fred. “Stay put lets get you in the barn”.

Uncle Fred hooked me up to the tractor – lifted the front of the car right up with the rear of the tractor while the front of the tractor was still pretending to be a snow blower.

The girls, my cousins Sarah, Ellyn and Jenny, all took pictures of their southern cousin – the bumpkin – being towed down the farm laneway. I have to see those pictures every Christmas.

I almost made it. 1,200 miles, and I got stuck in the last half mile.

But Uncle Fred never let a little snow scare him off.

I miss Uncle Fred.

But today – during our foot of snow blizzard – after cancelling our Children’s Christmas party - I can hear his voice loud and clear.

“It’s just a little snow, Freddy. Don’t be scared of a little snow.”

Resting Up From Vacation

It is the first day back to work after using my vacation last week to move into our new house. Thank goodness.

I need the rest.

The bad news is I have another week off next week.

It’s been a long week of slogging back and forth from the new house to the old house – still picking up the remainders of what the movers didn’t.

I fell down our new basement stairs once. I could swear my heels touched my shoulders. I screamed quite loudly. Have you ever thought you were on the last step but you weren’t?

I did that with about five steps to go.

I was carrying Darlene’s favorite framed pictures at the time.

As I laid there, I moaned “it’s broken”. I was talking about my leg. Dar thought I was talking about the frames.

“It better not be!” she growled. I still thought she was talking about my leg too!

She pulled the best picture out of the box – “No, it’s fine”, she said as she pranced away happily.

I untied my legs from their new pretzel configuration and was delighted to find that I did not break anything, only sprained my ankle and twisted my bad knee, And the only nurse in the house just pranced away happy.

Both the ankle and knee swelled right up. But unfortunately I could still walk. I got a reprieve that afternoon, and tried out the new pool with ice on both joints. But the next day we went right back at it. And it got hot again.

My Mum is coming up from Pensacola for a visit. She arrives Thursday night. She is anxious I believe to see the new place. And we have everything all ready for her.

Except a bed.

We took this opportunity to move my youngest from her Dora the Explorer toddler bed, into the cabin bed that my eldest had. And we moved my eldest up to the double bed we kept in what we called “The Grandma’s Room”.

Unfortunately we have to wait until this weekend before we can replace that bed with a new pillow topped one for Grandma.

I also put my old TV in my eldest’s room. I plugged in the cable for it, and the cable TV was still working. We are trying a satellite company now, so we did not move our cable.

The girls were very excited. They spent all their free time in my eldest’s room watching TV – their own TV.

Then the cable guy turned off the service.

And to my daughters, I am an “Indian giver”.

I apologize for using this term, I know it is derogatory in nature, but I do not know of another way to describe someone who gives a gift and then takes it back. And if I am not mistaken, the term truly means what the white men did to the Native Americans, they gave them something, and then they took it back.

Notice I used the royal “They”.

But I digress.

So now I have to call the cable company, and get them to turn on the cheapest service they have.

My Mum shipped up a package for my youngest daughter’s fifth birthday. She shipped it UPS. She asked us not to open it until she arrived.

When it came, Darlene’s Mum received it from the UPS driver. It was no longer a rectangular shape. It was now a triangle. The driver quipped “It looks like it’s been around the world”.

I opened the box, and everything is Ok.

But the morale to my entire moving experience is:

“If you hire a service – be it movers or UPS delivery, they likely won’t do a good job. But when you decide you no longer need a service, like cable TV, just watch how quickly and efficiently they discontinue it for you.”

Or …

The path of least resistance is most often followed by those that choose not to leave.

Summertime Moving

It’s the first week in July, and it just doesn’t get any more “summer” than this.

It’s great.

In Windsor, we savor every second of summer.

It is still early enough in summer that you have a clear blue sky, with a big yellow sun.

The haze doesn’t come for a couple more weeks.

I love summer.

We are almost complete moving into our new house. Our dream house. And today is the first day that I can sit and enjoy the place. Poor Darlene had to go to work today.

Poor Darlene. She has busted her butt harder than anybody else.

Today the girls and I will spend most of the day out in the back yard – swimming in the pool.

That ought to wear them out.

The best part about this house is that the neighborhood is chalked full of kids. Kids - kids - kids. Lots of kids. Lots of kids who are five and six years old.

Finally the girls can play with kids in the neighborhood. They can go over to a friend’s house, knock on the door and say “can Mary come out and play?”

They just have to make the friends now.

We still have stuff at the old place. It is amazing how much the movers didn’t move. How much they didn’t move for six hundred bucks.

Nothing behind the bar

No clothes packed in Wardrobe boxes.

No closets packed in little boxes

Nothing from my workshop – not even the Christmas decorations

Nothing from the outside shed – I had to haul my lawnmower myself

Nothing from the back yard – like the teeter-totter or the girls bikes.

And the whole time they weren’t moving that stuff, they were complaining about how hard the work was.

They were clearly stoned.

“I’m sorry”, I would say over and over, “perhaps you need to find a different profession”

“Nah, moving is in my blood. Can’t nobody pack a truck like me” replied their leader

“Where is my lawn mower?” I asked having heard his self-proclaimed skill.

“Oh – it’s still at the other place. Nothing but small stuff there”, should be easy for you.” He replied – “If you want to pay us for a second load we could …”

“Ahh” I said deciding if this was a fight worth having. “

He was stoned and exhausted, I could probably take him.

I went to the old place the next morning with Dar.

We spent the next days hauling stuff in our Jeep and Sebring.

Next time I go car shopping, I’m getting a truck.

Packing

We have lived in our current home for four years.

It is amazing how little time four years seems when you’re over forty.

Remember high school? That took four years too.

Well for most of us anyway. But it seemed like a life time then.

My daughters are six and almost five years old now. This is really the only home they know. All that they really remember.

It’s too bad, because we have lived in some nice homes.

But we never owned those homes.

So while it seems like we just got here to Darlene and I, as we are packing, we find ourselves bombarded with memories of the girls that occurred here.

• Starting daycare.
• Riding the school bus.
• Starting elementary school and the awards they have racked up.

My daughter Alannah has won the student of the month award two years in a row for being the most trustworthy in her class. This does not speak kindly of the trustworthiness of her classmates.

But we packed up her certificates anyways.

Ashley-Rae learned how to walk in this house. Then run. Then jump. Usually on the living room furniture.

We had to have the furniture cleaned.

They both really learned how to talk in this house.

Then they learned to talk back.

In the summer time we live in our backyard. It’s quite nice and rather private given our location. Both girls learned to ride their bikes in this yard. Alannah learned how without training wheels.

We made up our own version of kick-ball back here. Our rules are based on three or more players. Our scores are often 10 to 8 to 6. The pine tree is first – the fence along Mr. Bud’s garage is second base, and the crabapple tree is third.

Home plate is this big worn spot created after several years of intense kick-ball matches.

We don’t think we can play kick ball in the new house. But maybe we can.

There was the first Christmas here when Alannah was not yet three.

She woke up Christmas morning, and not having been given clear rules about Christmas presents, started unwrapping all the presents.

Luckily she came across Uncle Glennie’s box of chocolates, or she may have opened up absolutely everything.

When we realized what had happened and “sprang from our beds to see what was the matter” – there was Alannah – chocolate from ear to ear – and the living room piled with unwrapped paper.

We were mad … for about 45 seconds – until we realized it was our own fault. Christmas morning present etiquette is a learned skill and not inherent.

As I was downstairs this evening, Darlene was busy packing up behind the bar in the family room. Our bar has a lot of great little knick-knacks – bar stuff.

• Coasters and mugs, and posters.
• Bowling trophies for champions and skunks.
• Irish Guinness memorabilia.
• And dart boards and equipment.

Our new house doesn’t have a bar – not yet anyways. So this stuff will likely be packed up until we build a new one.

Darlene found my box of photographs. It’s a small box. There are probably about two hundred or so photos in there. Usually photos that people have given me from their duplicates.

There I stood in one picture, all thin and muscular. And my hair was still brown.

I looked in the mirror.

“What happened to that guy?”

There were pictures of the kids in our family that are now all grown up. Pictures of Becky and Ben, Reid and Cole, Corrine. Now they are all adults or in their late teens. And it is amazing how much Corrine and Becky resemble each other.

Good thing they are good looking.

There were pictures of Dad, Uncle Fred, Aunt Sheila, and Uncle Herb. All are gone now. Together someplace else. But in this picture they are still with me.

I looked out the window in the yard. It was full of birds. Some were looking in.

I think those guys know we’re moving too.