Wind chill in the teens, not sure I can remember that low in mid November. Snow flurries this afternoon.
2 more practices & the State Cross Country meet on Friday. Then I get some time off from coaching for a short time.
21 when I rolled out this morning, pushing 29 now—39 high if the weatherman’s feeling generous. I’m done with winter already. Especially after wrestling a hot water heater yesterday, where it fought like it owed me money. I won.
<here comes the exercise in creative writing that is based on my childhood accurately>
But this cold in mid-November? Oh yah, though not so much recently.
I was five, maybe six. South Bend, Indiana in the heart of the Polish-Hungarian ghetto. Stores with names like "Kolacz Brothers", "Jaworski's Market", "Pejza's Taven", and "Nagy's Place" all built in and near rows of little tar-shingled boxes that marched down each block in the neighborhood, every yard with Gardens, lilacs or grape arbors. Air smelled like jelly in summer, lilac in spring, and every Thanksgiving, turkey roasting slow in Grandma’s oven. She only cooked a bird once a year. Christmas meant roast beef, Easter ham. November? Snow on the ground, guaranteed.
The smell of overcooked turkey filled the air as I’d stomp in wearing a puffy snowsuit, moon boots lined with bread bags (still don’t know how that was supposed to keep anything dry), and those cursed mittens clipped to my sleeves. Six inches of snow felt like the Himalayas to a kindergartner.
This was the corner of Dubail and South Bend Avenue—right where Studebaker, Oliver, and the South Bend Lathe works were coughing their last. Train whistles, semi rumble, the metal recycler’s shriek.
A Christmas Story is set in the ’40s, but I lived the echo in the early ’70s. Rust Belt, Lake Michigan wind, same grit. Snow in November wasn’t weird. It was just Thursday.
