Whenever we get tired of breathing the same air, along comes spring.
This website brought to you in part by the following sponsor:
Find out how to advertise here - Email us! [email protected]
I’m ready. You?
Actually, I’m not sure it’s spring quite yet despite our surprisingly pleasant weather. Just this past Monday, for a brief time with the sun brightly shining, it was a balmy 60+ degrees — in February, for cryin’ out loud.
Kinda makes you want to flaunt it to all those snow birds that fly away from here every winter, doesn’t it?
Seems like yesterday I breathed some air that came from the deep South. I could taste a little sunburn in it. Made me so lazy I wanted to go out into the yard and lay down in the grass beside my dog to doze until the neighbor throws us both something to eat.
Hints of springtime here are so strong they could knock over full-grown cows (…take that, you snow birds)!
Now, when you look upward, you hear springtime’s noisy return as geese in huge “V” formations point back to their northern homelands. The honkers know how spring winds blow.
Another sure sign of spring is the number of plastic grocery bags you see snagged high up in the trees. It’s the way of the wind to blow away winter’s debris.
If you’re observant, you can learn all sorts of things. Go look in the hedge between you and the neighbors on the windward side to see what you can see. Barbecue chip bags confirm the neighborhood kids have acquired new tastes over the winter; numerous empty frozen meal packages may indicate more than just the dog spent at least part of the winter in the dog house.
The surest sign of spring, however, has yet to happen. Spring’s that time when the womenfolk start craving a new set of clothes.
I realize it’s not smart to note such things. The secret to long marriage is for the man to abstain from counting his wife’s pairs of shoes or purses or new springtime clothes. Ever. Regardless of the weather.
Without trying to pontificate, I guess that’s why farm wives tend to stay hitched to the same guy so long. Farm wives aren’t into change or fashion nearly as much as their counterparts. Oh, they might pine for something different but they’ll usually settle for a visit to Elbert’s for a new pair of Muck boots to keep on just keeping on.
Rather than a new blouse, a farm wife likes a new Carhartt shirt — or any shirt with big pockets. They know, as a member of the fairer sex and following the first hints of spring, March winds threaten. Clothes with big pockets are essential for these little gals. You just never know when you might need to fill big pockets with rocks for ballast.
I kid you not. I may have forgotten much of what I ever learned during my four years attending Northwest Missouri State years ago. But I’ll never forget Northwest winds (despite their inability to blow away constant, poignant aromas of the dairy farm then located next to the high rise dormitories).
I once saw a coed wearing an Army trench coat turn the corner at the Student Union. The wind came whistlin’ down from the Ad Building, funneling between Horace Mann and the Student Union buildings. The wind converted her trench coat into a sail, and she quite literally was blown off the sidewalk, up into the air, toward the college pond.
You don’t forget such things, seeing her land flat on her back.
Or, if you just can’t picture that, consider those huge wind turbines now crowding the horizon as you drive over towards St. Joe. It seems like they’re spinning faster. Much faster.
Springtime’s a’comin’. There’s a lot of hot air moving somewhere … a lot more than just what you’re reading here.
Peace.