“Cool Climate, Warm Welcome”

MY CAVE, MY VIEW

by Gary Torres

I wake up, roll over and look out the window. Based on the white covering of snow, I am trying to remember if I bought all the Christmas presents I needed.

But I can’t sort out in my brain why it is the first day of summer vacation, the kids are out of school, my too kind and loving wife is sleeping in late and there is SNOW everywhere. Something doesn’t seem right.

I vaguely remember seeing Julie Bronson putting blankets over all her plants, but that seems like ages ago and just a bad dream.

Besides, why would anyone put blankets on their plants? Maybe that is how she keeps all the dang deer from eating them to stubs!

I drive by Julie’s yard often and I am always envious because her yard looks like someone that has a green thumb lives there. Mine looks like a gravel pit.

Maybe she keeps the dead bighorn sheep on the wall as a warning to any deer that might like to nibble at her tulips.

Although, to be honest, we can’t blame our dismal yard on the deer. My too kind and loving wife and I can’t keep a silk plant green.

We can kill any plant, have killed many plants, and will yet kill many more plants. I once brought home a rubber palm tree and it was wilted in the morning.

I prop my head on the pillow as my senses become more alert, I stare out in disbelief, a three day weekend and the golf course is covered in snow and school is out.

I make a mental note to write a letter to the School District and ask them why we are out of school so early. Surely they know that May is too early to be out of school and besides, August is too hot to be in those stuffy classrooms.

I am still sleepy, but deep in my cerebral network random electrical impulses are sparking, causing me to twitch as I look out at the snow.

Who is in charge of the weather? Is that the City Council… wasn’t it them that invented the logo “Cool Climate, Warm Welcome”?

Right now, I would rather have a Warm Climate and Cool Welcome and keep the Hideout hidden.

Oh well, I guess they are too busy talking about giving away the golf course? Don’t they remember what happened when we sold the ski lift?

Ten years of drought, the ski lift has never been open since, and not a single local has swooshed down the North Slope since.

Great, pretty soon we will have some rich guy as a neighbor with an eight acre lawn that he will want to water; but not let us play on.

I remember back in December someone at church telling us to fast and pray for snow. So, when is it okay to stop praying for snow?

And I don’t want to be a whiner, because I know the farmers always like the moisture, but can we be more specific in our prayers and just ask for rain, preferably during the week days and leave the weekends to be sunny and warm?

I am fully awake now and have my nose and belly button pressed up against the window looking out at the snow. Yup, it is snow alright.

I thought it might be the spicy salsa from last night causing me to hallucinate, but alas it is snow and I decide that I don’t want to be around when my too kind and loving wife wakes up and sees that her first day of summer vacation will require her to scrape her windows.

Well, we at least got the Cool Climate.