My Orvis Adventure

  A new store that specializes in men’s outdoor wear has just opened on Chagrin Blvd. It’s called Orvis, an old-time high-end outfitter that I have known by catalog for many years. I was intrigued by the news, and stopped by a few days after the premier. It turned out to be a wonderful place, spacious, a huge selection of leather, canvas, waterproof, windproof, and snow proof garments, some guaranteed to keep you warm to 20 below. A little expensive. But there before my eyes were some of the coats and jackets that I have always admired. And craved. I started trying them on. I smiled at myself as I looked in the mirror. I saw a country gentleman, properly prepared for any winter-like eventuality.

  Then it struck me. Winter? What am I thinking about? I won’t be here. I won’t need this lovely, windproof, waterproof, zero proof jacket. Not now. Maybe not forever. My life is changed. And winter won’t be part of it.
  I took off the handsome coat returned it to the rack and somberly began to leave the store. Yes, for better or for worse my life has changed…no more winter.
  My lifestyle change began last year when I spent December through April south of the Mason line in Texas and Florida where it doesn’t get really cold. Perhaps a few gray rainy days, maybe a frost, that gets farmers and gardeners excited, sometimes it gets down to thirty.  But not really bone chilling cold.  Certainly no snow. Nothing that would require the kind of coats that Orvis sells.  Why am I deluding myself, getting exited about these coats, trying them on, when I will have no need for them? I wonder. Snow birds, they call us migrating seniors, in the Southland.
  No snow…no lake-effect…no blizzard warnings, no endless traffic, no shoveling out of the driveway. Scraping windshields, dodging salt trucks. A weather related love-hate  sentiment, perhaps latent, began bubbling up in my brain.
  Snow has been part of life, forever. It was probably snowing on the day I was born in the hospital on 55th St. in late November.
  For forty years or more I drove five days a week west on Carnegie or Chester to my labors of love, so to  speak, at the Press on 9th St. or Tri C’s district office on Carnegie.  Certainly they weren’t beautiful trips. Ugly, gray deteriorating buildings, some windowless, many boarded up. Cars slipping and sliding. Frantic drivers pounding on their horns.  I wasn’t pleasant. In those days Cleveland really didn’t know how to clear streets.
  There were no snow days for us, ever. The Press printed every day in its long history, except November 22, 1950 when we were hit by 20 inches overnight.  My boss, a tall macho Ivy League type, had walked from his house on Princeton Rd. in Cleveland Heights, past scores of snowed-in streetcars, hundreds of abandoned cars, to the office. When he arrived he called me home, asking where I was. Of course. He was the only one who showed up. It was so bad the National Guard was called in to clear the streets.
  On the other hand, have you ever walked around the Shaker Lakes just after a snowstorm when the sun is breaking through the clouds?  Crisp, white, fresh, clean.  The lake sparkles, the angular trees look like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. White branches, immaculate.
  Have you driven or walked River Road in Hunting Valley, or visited the Falls in Chagrin just after a fresh snow?
  You got used to it…the boots, the heavy sweater. The ear muffs and hand warmers. The memories of sledding in Cain Park, tobogganing on New Year's Eve with all the kids at Virginia Kendall Park near Akron. You hummed those wonderful tunes “Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow." “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.”
  Will I miss the snow? Possibly not. But somehow I sense that I may still want to buy one of those great Orvis coats. 
  Just in case…