Snow – is winter over with yet?

        I woke to an unpleasant surprise on Monday morning – a light blanket of snow.
        I’ve lived in the state for almost 27-years, and I still don’t like snow and cold.
       Having grown up in Oklahoma, we didn’t get the snow like in Iowa. However, I do recall a few big storms through the years.
      One that comes to mind was in March of 1984, or maybe 1989. There’s been a lot of water and snow under the bridge since those days.
     Anyway, it snowed 14-inches and shut down my hometown of Tulsa for three days. By early March, Oklahomans are usually enjoying 70 plus degree weather, not a big a snowstorm. There was no mail, package deliveries, school and many business were closed due to the storm.
      Tulsa didn’t have snowplows back in the day outside of some plows that the state used to clean off the interstates and main throughfares. The rest was left to melt and refreeze until it was gone.
        It was bad enough that I got stuck in my driveway and had to call a friend to drive his four-wheel drive up and down the driveway to help get me unstuck.
       Some of my fondest memories of snow in Tulsa was when I was a kid. I remember on occasion my dad loading my sled, a gift from Santa, in the back of his pickup and carrying me a few blocks to a big hill in my neighborhood. It was there that I would join some of my school chums and go sledding for a time, until I got too tired.
        And I remember lots of ice storms in Tulsa in the 1970s. I took my share of slips and falls while delivering my newspaper routes and even once, wrecked my car during high school when I backed in to a sign pole on an icy morning.
       My mom was quite upset with me and took my car, a 1959 Chevrolet Impala, to a body shop and had them fix the crash and repaint my car. She also took my driving privileges away, which hurt a lot more than the crash.
        In January 1977, during my junior year in high school, we had a Tulsa blizzard for the books. When we crawled out of the bed at 4 a.m. to deliver our newspapers, it was snowing heavily and piling up quickly. It was also bitter cold and the wind was whipping the snow around like a tornado. My family threw 400 Tulsa World newspapers on Sunday and trudging through that storm was one that I will never forget.
        My dad drove his pickup loaded with newspapers while my mom and I took turns walking a block at a time placing the Sunday news on our customer’s porches. The warmth of my dad’s truck kept us going. We finished delivering the last newspaper around 10 a.m. We typically were done by 7 a.m., but not on that day.
          There have been a few winter-weather challenges along the way since moving to Iowa.
         In the late 1990s, I remember driving my S-10 pickup to see a friend and his family in Princeton, Ill. I never checked the weather when I traveled, so most of the time I had no idea what was happening. If it wasn’t for cell phones and Debbie, I probably still wouldn’t be checking the weather.
         I had stopped in Davenport to top off my gas tank, buy a Pepsi and a Sunday newspaper. The cashier told me to be careful. I thanked him and went on my way.
         I didn’t give it much thought until I was about 10-miles west of the Quad Cities where I drove headlong into a winter snow storm. There were vehicles and semis littering the ditches. With no weight in the back of my pickup, it was a miracle that I made it home without sliding in the ditch. I about yanked the steering wheel out of my truck from gripping it so tight as I inched along the Interstate.
         And another time, after moving to the country northwest of Montezuma, I went to pick up a pizza on a snowy Friday night. At the time, our driveway had quite an incline. It has since had some improvements made to it and is much better these days. I tried driving up our driveway, only to slide backwards and right into the road ditch where I hit the E-911 sign in my yard. I ended up breaking my outside driver’s side mirror in the process.
         My brother-in-law stopped a couple days later with his John Deere tractor and pulled me out of the ditch. That was not a pleasant situation.
           There is one thing about living in Iowa. There are a lot of hardy folks in this state. It’s not uncommon for me to see some fellow with no coat in short-legged britches on a cold, snowy winter night walking across the street into a building or house.
           It’s also not uncommon to drive by some homes and the driveway is full of four-wheel drives after a snowstorm. The good old boys stopped for a few beers and a tasty grilled steak on the BBQ grill. And they like to go ice fishing and hunting in the dead of winter. I enjoy sitting in my easy chair in my warm house.
             I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough snow. I’m already looking forward to spring.
            Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day.