Pop Goes The World Joann Ware
The snow and sleet that fell Jan. 24-25 is finally disappearing from the landscape. It still exists in jagged plies resembling models of the Andes Mountains in parking lots. There are a few stubborn patches in yards that won’t be erased by the rising temperatures and steady sunlight. It would have been fine if it had just stayed s n o w . When it started to fall on Saturday evening, Jan. 24, it seemed like the kind of pretty, inoffensive snow that swirls around besotted couples in Hallmark movies. By nightfall the flakes looked like fine diamond dust when illuminated by the headlights of passing vehicles. I tucked myself into bed that night hoping and praying that the forecasters were wrong about the freezing rain.
We never did get freezing rain, but that Sunday afternoon sleet did start to ping the windows. The sleet fell all afternoon until it formed a layer of impenetrable ice over the soft snow. Within a few hours Rockbridge County had been turned into a skating rink.
The backyard looked very pretty when the sun came out, but then I remembered it was pretty much all ice. Outside the basement door where the ice partially melted from the close proximity to the warm house, I saw the tiny pawprints of a poor creature who had no doubt been looking for refuge from the frigid temperatures and frozen ground. Famished birds turned our bird feeder into a 24-hour diner. Our indoor cats snoozed, enjoying the warmth of the natural gas heat that they have no paw in paying for and being treated like the spoiled furbabies they are.
I made a big batch of slow cooker chili. I figured that if the power went out, we could just store the leftover chili outside where it was colder than the interior of the refrigerator and then reheat the chili over the fire pit in the backyard. It’s a good thing that we didn’t lose power. Getting anywhere near the fire pit was an impossibility due to the ice.
The news on Feb. 2 was bleak. Puxatawney Phil saw his shadow, which meant that we were facing six more weeks of winter instead of an early spring. I’m sure that after that, Google saw an uptick in searches for recipes like groundhog barbecue and groundhog au gratin.
But why roast a celebrity rodent for such a dire prophecy? It’s not like his predictions have been correct 100% of the time. He’s been right 39% over the past century. Why does a country that sent a man to the moon allow a groundhog to dictate what the weather is going to be like in the next few weeks?
I remember waking up to snow on school days and waiting patiently for the latest hit by a country music star to finish on WREL to hear about school cancellations.
But not all school cancelations were met with overwhelming joy.
One year in high school, my Latin Club planned to meet at my house. My mother, aware that some of my classmates were the sons and daughters of college professors, wanted to make the meeting as fancy as she could. She went to the store and bought some expensive cheese and crackers to serve them.
The day that the club was to meet at our house, school was canceled due to snow. The meeting was not rescheduled. I saw the cheese Mom bought every time I opened the refrigerator and I wanted to cry.
One day when I couldn’t bear the presence of that pricey cheese in the fridge, I said to Mom, “Let’s have an indoor picnic.”
We sat at the kitchen table and ate the cheese and the crackers as the snow that prevented the Latin club from convening at our home continued to melt outside.
