Texas Independence Day (and a fine day to blog).

We had a heavy snowfall last year on March 2, the heaviest of 2002 I believe. That day was a Saturday, and the next day we took a drive through the nearby Morton Arboretum to see its hundreds of trees all caked in sparkly white. A cold wonder, except for the distraction of actually having to pay attention to the Arboretum’s twisty little roads, avoiding the many other cars.

Today, snow fell again, but barely enough to cover the brown grass. The weather gurus are predicting bitter cold once again, before a modicum of warmth comes our way. So it’s still cold here in Illinois, but on the whole we’ve dodged most of the snow & ice bullets in the winter of ’03.

Word from my brother Jay came last week on conditions in Dallas, during his morning commute: “I decided to try driving to the train station instead of walking the half mile to the nearest bus stop. The train station is about three-and-a-half miles distant. The streets in the neighborhood were completely glazed, so I drove 5 miles an hour, barely touched the steering wheel, and depended on gravity to stop. Ten minutes got me to a major street, one lane of which had two ruts visible through the ice. Fifteen miles an hour now. I arrived at the station, finally…”

This winter has seen the East Coast, Tennessee and other places in the mid-South, Missouri, and now Oklahoma and North Texas clobbered by cold storms. Places, except for the Yankee parts of the East Coast, that aren’t equipped for frozen precipitation like we are in metro Chicago.

Still, that doesn’t mean it's been pleasant here in the mid-upper-Midwest. Just been plain stinking cold. If I could pick one place I’ve lived as best in terms of weather, Nashville would win that one. Four more or less equal seasons: winterspringsummerfall — cold, warm, hot, cool. A good snow once or twice each winter, just enough to keep things interesting, and not cold all day every day like Chicago. Fine spring days occasionally punctuated by terrific all-hell-out-for-a-stroll thunderstorms, one of which scared the wits out of an Englishman I was rooming with in the spring of ’84. Hot summers, but not hot every day (as it usually was in San Antonio) and not sticky every day (as it usually was in Osaka). Excellent blue-sky gold-foliage fall days.

Nashville had a lot of other things going for it, too, as a place to live. I didn’t appreciate them nearly enough when I lived there. On the other hand, the promise of warm days in Chicago is glorious. It’s just that that train is always late in coming.