It's days like these when Fairbanks seems pretty hot
I have a cousin who lives in the Florida Gulf Coast city of Destin, and I'm thinking about Tina and her husband, Kevin, a lot today.
It's 65 degrees in Destin as I write this column. It's zero and going down here.
In late December, Kevin returned to Minnesota with his wife for a memorial service. As we headed out to the church, I asked the Alabama native what he thought of our weather.
“Shoot, I don't know how you people do this all winter,” he said. “You're either tough or crazy, I don't know which.”
And to think, it was a balmy 23 in Mankato on that day.
Maybe it's this creeping middle age deal, but I used to think I was tough and could handle winter. Now, I realize that I'm just crazy. In the late 1980s, I was offered a job at the Sun newspaper in the California desert city of Indio. It's 73 there as I write this column. Tough or crazy? Isn't the answer obvious?
I don't want to hear that this is just a normal winter after years of abnormality. I don't want to hear that “when I was a kid, we had 10-foot drifts and we still went to school.” I don't want to hear that it could be worse.
This has not been a fun winter. Granted, we haven't had that storm where a foot of snow has been dumped on us, but these “little storms” with their wind and snow and ice have more than made up for the lack of the “big one.” I might be able to handle all of it if it didn't get so blasted cold after every single one of these weather events.
The honest truth is I've become a winter wimp; this from a guy who when he was a kid thought of a snow day as one that was meant to be spent outside no matter how fast the snow was falling or how hard the wind was blowing.
The fact is that I grew to like these abnormal winters, the ones we've had in recent years where temperatures would reach the 40s on some January days and the 50s on some February days. Sure, there were snowstorms, but there was the hope that it would warm up soon. Those hopes have gone unfulfilled this year, and I'm telling you I'd kill for one of those warm winter days right about now.
It's enough to make me want to move to Fairbanks, Alaska, where the temperature is a tropical 27 as I write this column.
WE WORKED YET another holiday here at the Summit, where like most of the rest of the private sector, we don't get days celebrating our presidents or Martin Luther King or Columbus off.
I love calling my boss on these holidays to ask him if we get time-and-a-half, and he laughs at me. But Dave has a great comeback for me.
“If you were a president at one time or another, you can have the day off with pay,” he says.
And as for Columbus Day in October, he tells me that if I came over on the Nina, Pinta or Santa Maria, go ahead and take the day off. “I'll even throw the Mayflower in the mix.”
Hmmmm, I'm getting old, but not that old.
THE BOYS AND I were talking about President's Day last week, and after their initial disappointment that they had to go to school (turns out they didn't because of the above-mentioned winter!), we got to talking about presidents.
I was a history major in college and took an “American Presidents” class that pretty much hooked me on the subject. The instructor - and later my advisor - was Lewis “Mickey” Croce, a fantastic teacher who had a flair for entertainment. In his younger days, he was a standup comedian and once appeared on the same stage as Don Rickles. His “re-enactment” of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln was must-see teaching.
But I digress.
The boys asked me who I thought were the best presidents from a historical standpoint, and I told them that a lot of times you have to wait at least 25, or even 50 years, before you can really pass judgment on how good - or how bad - a president performed.
Look at Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was not highly regarded when he left office in 1961, but in the eyes of historians, his stock has risen. Ike was the president, for example, who pushed for the creation of the Interstate highway system - an idea born when he was commanding Allied forces as they traveled through Germany on Hitler's famous autobahn system.
Anyway, if you put a gun to my head and said name “your top five or else,” here goes (in no particular order):
€ George Washington: The first remains one of the best because he set the tone for the office. The fact is he had no blueprint to draw from, and instead of making the presidency something akin to “royalty,” he made the office what it is today.
€ Abraham Lincoln: His ability to entrust so many important offices to his political rivals was pure genius. And his desire to preserve the Union stands the test of time. The sad fact is that his assassination probably altered American history for the next 100 years because his successor, Andrew Johnson, didn't come close to possessing the political prowess Lincoln had.
€ Franklin D. Roosevelt: “We have nothing to fear but fear itself” helped America survive the Great Depression, Hitler and the Japanese.
€ Thomas Jefferson: If for nothing else, his Louisiana Purchase eventually made the U.S. a truly continental nation.
€ Millard Fillmore ... just kidding. If Jefferson put America on the road to being a continental power, it was Roosevelt - along with his predecessor, William McKinley - who put the U.S. on the road to being a superpower. Plus, Roosevelt was probably our first environmental president, creating the National Parks system.
IT'S NOW ONE-below. I'm cold, and I'm just looking outside. Boy, does Indio sound really nice right about now. So does Fairbanks.
Bob Fenske is the editor of the Forest City Summit. He can be reached by phone at 585-2112 or by e-mail at editor@forestcitysummit.com
Story created Feb 19, 2008 - 14:38:43 CST.
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