Alius Ver

Alius Ver

I stood for a few minutes late this afternoon staring out a western-facing doorway here at work into a bright setting sun. The door is all glass so I could feel the radiant heat as it beat against my skin. As I stood there half-hypnotized by the unaccustomed sight, I gave a silent thank you to whatever powers that be for this unexpected gift. It felt wonderful!

It has been a cold and wet spring in this portion of northern Ohio I call home. The occurrences of sunshine the past several months have been few and the handful of times when the sun actually did appear only served to remind us all of what a normal spring used to look like. Gray skies, rain, thunder and more rain have been our lot since the last of winter's dirty snow has melted. People say it's climate change and I guess that's as good an excuse as any. Up until recently I seem to recall they called it global warming. At least until the recent long and severe winters started piling up. Haven't heard much from our old pal Al Gore on global warming the last couple of years, have we? Kind of hard to keep beating the drum on global warming when wearing a parka and mukluks.

So the catchphrase now is climate change.

They say it's our fault, too. Too many cars. Too many belching cattle. Or is it flatulent cattle? And lots more active volcanoes. Or tsunamis? And don't you remember when they were “tidal waves”? And then again I've heard it's just too many people. Or not enough trees. Or too many golf courses. Or... Or... Or...

I guess science has gradually moved into the climate change camp, too, even as the loyal opposition still maintains it's just a natural cycle.

I used to subscribe to one of those theories. I'm now leaning the other way. I'll let you guess as to which one.

In any event, the winters recently seem to be longer, colder and heavy with more snow than usual followed by long, gray, wet springs. At least the last few have seemed that way. And at least that's the situation around here. I suppose there are other places that are too dry, too hot and miserable in other ways. I seem to recall reading about them.

But what can you do? I don't own any flatulent cattle. I haven't built any golf courses or cut down any trees. I may contribute to the depletion of the ozone layer by my own flatulence from time to time, but I don't think that's a large contribution. At least macroclimactically speaking. In the offend-the-guy-sitting-next-to-you way of looking at it, yes, I'm probably one of the “bad” guys. But I'm going to blame the bean and Brussels sprout farmer. He's the one giving me the ammunition!

But, be honest about the weather. Hasn't it always been that way? I remember damn cold, snowy winters. And wet, rainy springs. And hot dry summers. We didn't blame them on anything exotic like we do now days. We just bundled up heavier (or lighter), turned up the furnace a bit (or the fan/air conditioner), made sure all the umbrellas still worked and went on with life.

And speaking about unusual weather reminds me of some memorable instances from the past.

When I was a young boy of three or four, maybe around 1950, and my parents rented a farmhouse for our residence. They didn't have much money and I suppose the place was quite economical How much fun it was in those days as a kid to run through the fields with my dog in the summertime and catch field mice. And how horribly bad the winter was that year; how the snow drifts were way over my head and how dad had to get up in the middle of each night to go to the cellar and stoke the coal furnace. Every night. And how I caught pneumonia that year, spent a week in the hospital and almost died except for a new “wonder” drug called penicillin.

In 1969 when I was in the Air Force and stationed in Panama and how I read about my hometown and local area in the South American edition of the Miami Tribune. On the fourth of July that year a monstrous thunderstorm stood over the area for hours and hours and dumped literally tons of water everywhere. Three police officers from the area were drowned as they tried to rescue people from the swiftly-flowing flooded areas around town. And that same day how my cousin and her husband were rendered homeless as their mobile home was ripped from it's foundation and smashed into the raging river that flowed around it that used to be a gentle creek. She walked the banks of that creek in the following weeks trying to find remnants of her belongings and of her life. She found very little.

On January 26 of 1978 the storm of the century blew into our area burying cars, blowing out power lines and killing 51 Ohioans. My wife and I were living in a mobile home at the time. We abandoned it and moved in with my father in his brick house. We would remain there for almost a week. The storm was so bad they still refer to it as the “White Hurricane” as the winds whipped over 80 miles per hour and the barometer reached record lows. My brother rode his snowmobile through the middle of town to get supplies for those of us stranded at dad's house.

On April 3 and 4 of 1974 I remember the tornado superoutbreak. 315 people were killed across the United States and the Ohio town of Xenia was devastated. About half the buildings of the town of 27,000 were damaged and 300 destroyed. It killed 32 people in that area. I remember it extremely well as paper fell from the sky in my hometown over 150 miles away that had been swept up from there.

When I think back on these terrible weather events I find that our long winters and wet, cool springs are a good trade off. I guess I'll take them over the catastrophes of the past.

So another damp spring slowly creeps into Ohio spreading its watery cheer and shy glimpses of sunshine. And I say welcome, my friend.

It sure beats shoveling snow.