"The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco." --- Mark Twain
Bundled up, on a crisp cool day this past May, we were spellbound at the Mark Twain House (and Museum) where the renowned author and his family lived from 1874 to 1891 in Hartford, Connecticut --- a fantastic tour in New England. But it was on a summer sojourn to the City by the Bay in 2017 that I was first reminded of the foregoing wise words of the famous American writer Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who operated under the pen name Mark Twain. The local weather report that July revealed a heat wave had blanketed the country, apart from the Bay area. So, the summertime chill took this Southerner by surprise. Shopping for a shawl, I encountered a solicitous clerk who suggested that I had arrived in town solely for the weather. It is true - it was picture perfect.
Though it had not taken me to the West coast, weather does, indeed, often dictate our coming and our going. This was certainly the case for my father, a liaison pilot for the 28th Field Artillery Battalion, 8th Infantry Division, during World War II. My handbook, "My Father's Letters Home: World War II, Line by Line (1942 - 1945)" detailed the copious letters which he wrote my mother throughout his service in World War II - the heartrending period which entailed their courtship a continent apart. Therein, I quoted his reflection from Ireland on March 2, 1944, "For several days it has snowed intermittently. The ground hasn't been completely covered, but if it continues - it may. Also it has been cold. I never realized that I would be forced to wear my 'long handles,' but this weather drives me to them. They are so cumbersome, but are invaluable now."
Digressing, I do hope Rodney and I don't have to wear "long handles" for our sojourn to the Emerald Isle and Scotland. They were a necessity several years ago in October in Scandinavia --- Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. Back to the war, summertime brought familiar warm weather which my father appeared to be enjoying - an ephemeral reprieve in France in August of 1944. I'm sure the invasion being behind the servicemen didn't hurt. Still, he complained of a deluge of rain and a "sea of mud," in France, which curtailed his flight missions.
Weather writing mesmerizes me. Waking up one dreary January day not so long ago, I received a text message from my double first cousin who has passed the three-quarters of a century mark, "TGIF Good morning! 59/65 rained all night long 1.90" Has stopped cloudy all day." An early morning weather report from Walthall County. Oh, happy day!
Fascination with weather must run in the family. The daily letters my father wrote me in the early 1980s, while I was at LSU, invariably contained a weather report for Washington Parish. And it almost always made me want to return home. Similarly, my mother's succinct daily entries in her journal, a hodgepodge of happenings in the winter of life, contained a short but accurate account of the daily weather which mattered, to her. For instance, one Sunday, February 12, she penned, "It is a very cold day. 29 degrees this a.m. There is a terrible snowstorm in the N.E. I am thinking of my friend Hilda [Stafford] whose husband is not well now. Rodney made waffles this a.m. and they were delicious." No matter how much Momma enjoyed the waffles, my better half's specialty, she started her writing with Old Man Winter. She (valedictorian) and her dear friend Hilda Stafford (salutatorian) had graduated at the top of their class from Franklinton High School in 1942.
In this same vein, Momma's first cousin Dr. T. C. W. Magee --- their mothers were sisters --- in his memoir, "Recollections of T.C.W. Magee, D.D. S.," noted the weather from the outset in his February 22, 1968, installment, "All-time record for N.O. Weather, also being Thursday, my day out of the office, today 32 degrees Today, George Washington's birthday, was a cold, bitter wintry day with mercury registering 30 degrees at 7:00 A.M. The wind blew raw and cold, occasionally pushing light rain, then some sleet and a few lazily, crazily drifting flakes of snow."
Enmeshed in Dr. T. C. W.'s description of a day, when I was three, I was transported back to late January of this year, the beginning of my sixtieth year, when on the twenty-first of the month we saw a record snowfall, surpassing anything in our area since 1895. A veritable snowstorm, in our neck of the woods.
Partial to the past, it should come as no surprise that I gravitate toward authors who offer a complete picture of the weather. For example, James Lee Burke's works, mystery fiction often set in Southwest Louisiana, captivate with vivid descriptions of the weather.
Admired author Ernest Hemingway explained it best, as follows, "All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was." Digressing, the Ernest Hemingway Home in Key West was another great outing, for us, many years ago. And we had a Key West kind of day - sunny, blue skies with a breeze.
On that note, I'm going to grab my shawl and retire to our porch on the Tennessee plateau where my favorite pastime is reading. September, as we discovered last year, is one of the nicest months here. With the brisk wind blowing through the trees, I'm keeping watch from my rocker. It's a darn near perfect day and one meant to be enjoyed before Old Man Winter sets in. I will make an entry in my journal.
