A chilly season doth approach

By David Myers

Southwest Kansas Register

It’s autumn in southwest Kansas: the chill is back; the grass is brown and crunchy; and the bugs have all retreated from the cold backyard to the safety of my basement. This includes “Harold,” a spider the size of my fist that I discovered several months ago living in my window well. (Harold’s previous name was, “Aaaaaaaaarrrgggh!!!!)

Another Halloween has come and gone, which means that the stores have been playing Christmas music to get us in that joyous consumer spirit for nearly three weeks now. Thank you, oh great Wal-Mart public address system, for instilling in me the spirit of the season -- that it is better to purchase a Canon D-37 digital camera with 10x optical zoom -- now on sale in electronics -- than it is to receive.

This winter in particular is a harbinger of sorts: Attention passengers: We are approaching an election year, so please remove your brain and place it in the overhead bin or beneath your seat. Please buckle your seat belts, as we are expecting significant turbulence for the following 12 months.

Election year; the one year in which the political wheels actually encourage us to dumb ourselves down for several months, to not look too closely at the candidates, to not read between the lines, to believe the lies, to accept the unacceptable. Don’t let this happen next year! Don’t judge the candidates only by their words! Look deeper! Judge them on how snazzy they dress and by how witty they are on talk shows.

And let’s not forget, winter is about snow -- I know that many Kansas ranchers and farmers won’t forget, not after the damaging ice and snow storms last year. And I won’t forget, not after so many frightening white knuckle drives home to Colorado for the holidays -- and not after one particular night some 10 years ago:

It was March of 1998. I was the managing editor of a small eastern plains newspaper in Colorado. My reporter, Rod (a good friend and quite possibly the funniest human being on the planet) and I were working late that night to get the paper to press.

Around 6 p.m. the snow came. It was the kind of snow that would make Sir Edmund Hillary say, “By crumb, I’m not getting out in this!” The radio reported white-out conditions and that an accident had closed the highway. We were stuck.

Still, fortune smiled upon us that evening; only a few weeks earlier Rod and I had attended a Tupperware/survival training seminar (“Come for the Tupperware, stay for the Civil Defence Nuclear Fallout kit”) and had learned to keep sleeping bags and other survival gear in our trucks, for just such an occasion.

As 10 p.m. approached and the newspaper was all set for the early morning presses, we crawled into our sleeping bags under our prospective desks. Tired and unkempt, Rod looked like a banana too small for its peel, and I looked like a week-old salmon wrapped in newspaper.

The floor was as hard as a pop-quiz. When I woke up, one of my ears had been squashed into my head, and I had somehow swallowed my left arm.

From across the room, I saw what looked like a Picasso come to life. Rod’s nose was where his chin used to be, and his right eye had somehow moved to the back of his head. It wasn’t pretty.

As other employees slowly dug themselves out of the snow at home and made their way back to work, Rod and I slowly woke up under our desks. Not being a morning person, Rod attended the 9:30 a.m. staff meeting still in his sleeping bag, much of his hair plastered to his head, other hairs sticking straight out like a porcupine.

I smelled like a dumpster behind a day care center. My socks dissolved as I drove up my driveway that evening, and my breath was so bad my car now had permanently tinted windows.

Soon after my editor arrived at work that morning, he sat down with me and said Rod and I could go home early. He said it was because we had stayed the night. But I knew that wasn’t true. It’s hard to lie when your face turns green and your eyebrows fall off.

Once again, winter weather is near. Here’s praying that God will grant us the peace and hope offered through the birth and resurrection of his son, as well as good moisture, safe travel, and a surprisingly sane start to this election year.