Chicago Winters Exposed

I’ve lived in Illinois my entire life, primarily around Chicago.  We take a perverse pride in our winters here.  President Obama explained it’s “real weather”, you see.  It’s hot and cold, dry and humid and we get rain and sleet and wind and snow… sometimes all at the same time.  If you talk to a typical Chicagoan, they’ll tell you blizzards build character.  The only way to truly enjoy a Bears game is sitting in the stands at Soldier Field as the temperature hovers near zero.  Bing Crosby may have sung White Christmas, but we live it, my friends.

I’ll let you in on a little secret: it’s all a load of crap.

It’s true.  We don’t like the cold any more than anyone else does.  Bing Crosby could sing longingly about a white Christmas because he spent his Decembers playing golf in Los Angeles.  Blizzards may build character, but they also generate torn rotator cuffs and heart attacks.  We watch Bears games in the snow… I don’t know why we watch Bears games in the snow.  I think alcohol might be involved.  The one game I saw in the winter, the guy in front of us was screaming and running around with his shirt off.  Personally, I was frozen solid.

So, now that I’ve pulled the scab off the truth, why do we stay here?  Well, a lot of us don’t.  This time of year, there are more Cubs fans in Arizona than Chicago.  The real South Side is Florida.  The rest of us stay because of jobs or because of family.  And a lot of us are afraid of bugs.  One positive thing about the cold is it kills bugs before they can grow to prehistoric proportions.  Have you seen some of the things crawling around down south?  We have mosquitoes, but they don’t carry off our children to be sucked dry at their leisure.  We have cockroaches, but they are little quick things that scurry away when you turn on a light.  They don’t hiss and come at you.  And tarantulas.  I realize tarantulas are not technically bugs, but only someone from a climate that can produce such monsters would deign to make a differentiation between the two.

The last major earthquake in this area was two hundred years ago.  When volcanoes erupt, we marvel at how pretty the sunsets are.  I can’t think of the last tsunami that ripped across Lake Michigan and I don’t think we’ve ever had a hurricane.  It gets cold here sometimes, but the way this whole global warming thing is going, December should be pretty nice in Chicago come mid century.  But we’ll continue to gripe and groan about how terrible the winters are here… and continue to hold back the throngs that would flee California and Florida and the rest to come up north.  Think I’m kidding?  President Obama left Hawaii to come to Chicago.  Food for thought, my friend.

Pothole Problems

One of the casualties of winter in Northern Illinois are the roads.  This happens every year.  Any small crack in the blacktop will get filled with water.  As it gets cold, the water freezes and the crack expands and buckles the roadway.  The road salt dumped down by the ton eats away at everything.  Snowplows are the final straw.  As they shovel away the ice and snow, they also tend to rip up the top layer of road.  When the missing chunks of roadway are small and isolated, they are called potholes.  Your car shudders as you slam into one, but it’s over in a moment.

This year, I haven’t seen as many potholes.  Instead, whole swathes of roadway are missing in long canyons in the asphalt.  Every time I drive I see crews out, patching what they can.  I can’t help but see them; traffic grinds to a halt as apparently no one has ever witnessed an orange truck on the side of the road before.  The Illinois Department of Transportation – or IDIOT (sorry, IDOT) says they can fix something like 10,000 potholes a week.  However, apparently Mother Nature is even more efficient at creating them.

Sadly, the only solution to the problem is summer, which is still a depressingly long time from now.  In the meantime, I’ve taken advice from Daniel and treat the upcoming potholes like some kind of video game action.  Actually, with the salt spray clouding up my windshield, the Wii has better graphics than reality.  I’ve been driving our truck more.  It has four wheel drive, good for off-road travel… even when the off-road travel is on a major expressway.

Illinois Winter, Rocket Summer

One day it was Illinois winter.  Kids bundled up like deep sea divers, waiting for the bus on the corner snow piled high.  Cars windows decorated in frozen lace.  Houses exhaled deep purple smoke from their chimneys like sleeping dragons resting still on the frozen Feburary plains.

After lunch, there was a subtle change to the sunlight.  The actinic glare softened and people found themselves stopping at their windows to look outside.  The frost shrank away from the warm light.  Snow dropped from the roofs, the hoods and steps where it had lain for more than a month.  Some melted away from underneath.  Long rivulets rushed down driveways and collected in large puddles in the street as blue as volcano lakes.  Some just evaporated away into the air like magic.

“Rocket Summer”, Ray Bradbury called it in The Martian Chronicles.  He was born in northern Illinois and knows the power of a mid winter thaw.  They don’t come every winter and they only stay for a day or two.  But they are a salve on a spirit trapped indoors by the weather for weeks at a time and suddenly free to rush outside without a coat.

The children coming home from school actually dawdled on their way, pushing and laughing, their winter things wadded up in their backpacks.  Here and there, tufts of gray grass poked out of the snow like a Polaroid photo of the neighborhood coming to life.  Adults stood on their porches, squinting up towards the sun as if they’d never seen it before.  Some quick thinking souls rolled hoses out of their garages to wash cars and – in the distance – someone decided to go fly a kite.

Blame it on the Cold

So, Meka and I were sitting in the family room, watching the inaugural ceremonies Tuesday night (we recorded it on our DVR).  Daniel had already seen it in school and was busy bouncing a ball in the kitchen.  We finally asked him to stop so we could hear the music playing before Barack Obama was sworn in as president.  It was one of those typical sweeping melodies from John Williams, as played by a superstar quartet of musicians: cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist Itzhak Perlman, pianist Gabriela Montero and clarinetist Anthony McGill.

Meka wondered, “How can they play their instruments when it’s so cold?”  We both knew Yo-Yo Ma has a Stradivarius cello.  Generally it’s not a good idea to subject a priceless instrument to sub-freezing temperatures.  We scrutinized the television and threw up some theories.  The wind was blocked by the bulletproof glass.  Maybe there were heaters keeping their little area warm.  My thought was they were playing on less priceless instruments.  After all they were legends; Yo-Yo Ma could probably make me cry playing on a rental cello from the local music store.  Like most conspiracy theories, it turned out the truth was something neither of us had considered.  The music was actually pre-recorded.  Yo-Yo Ma put soap on his bow to reduce the sound made when he applied it to the strings of his cello.  The piano keys were disconnected from the hammers inside.  None of the instruments were actually miked.

Maybe it’s not as shocking as discovering the cute kid sang to the homely kid’s vocals in the Olympic opening ceremonies, but it still left a sour note in my ears when Yo-Yo Ma came clean on NPR Friday afternoon.  What was worse – in my opinion – was the blasé attitude.  Of course, the music is pre-recorded.  The Marine Corps Band has done it for years.

Excuse me?

While they dress as well as they play, the Marine Corps Band is – ultimately – made of marines.  I thought they were the postal workers of music: neither rain, nor snow, nor dark of night will prevent them from playing lively marching tunes.  It turned out that was a misstatement by Yo-Yo Ma.  The band played live (though they had pre-recorded Hail to the Chief, just to be on the safe side).

In the final analysis, I don’t disagree the musicians should have played live no matter what.  I appreciate their desire to put out the best product possible for the people who braved the winter weather in Washington D.C.  In fact, I would say they didn’t go far enough.  Imagine how historic the oath would have looked had Chief Justice Roberts been able to mime against a tape he had perfected in the studio.

The First Snow of the Season

The snow started sometime Sunday afternoon.  I didn’t notice it at first; the flakes sort of blended in with the overcast sky.  By early evening, it was obvious this wasn’t just another dash of flurries.  We were getting our first bona fide snow of the season.  As is tradition, Meka rushed to the phone to order Chinese food.  However, I decided to forego delivery and go out myself to pick it up.  I’m a seasoned veteran, but I haven’t driven in snow for several months.  I wanted to get acclimated when few people would be on the road.  The Bears had a night game; it was perfect.

The temperature was just below freezing and the snow was falling in large clods the size of Jurassic mosquitoes.  There was no wind and the snow lay fluffy and shining across our lawn and the driveway.  I pulled the truck out of the garage and threw it into All Wheel Drive.  Some people believe “all wheel drive” is equal to “suction cups on your tires” (those people end up in ditches by the way).  Belvidere’s snow removal plan is “spring”, so the side streets tend to be worse than the main roads.  I took it slow, got used to starting my turns about three blocks away and letting the anti-lock brakes jerk me to a halt at every stop sign.

On Route 20, it was just me and about a dozen cars with “Pizza Hut” signs.  Most of them were driving a good thirty miles an hour below the speed limit.  I didn’t mind; this was the first snow of the season, after all.  It was a good idea to be careful to the point of insanity.  Even at thirty miles an hour the snow looks like warp drive from Star Trek, bright points caught in the headlights streak past the windshield.  I should have brought a CD.  Oh well.  I’ll do it next time.  There will be plenty of chances to drive in snow over the next four or five months.

The Final Days of Fall

November in northern Illinois is not my favorite time of year.  We probably average six hours of sunshine during the entire month.  The overcast skies exude a thin drizzle; if not actual precipitation, then just a cold damp feeling that works its way into your bone marrow.  As the wind picks up and the temperature drops, we can expect the first flurries of the season.  Flurries don’t count as real snow.  They melt before they hit the ground, leaving you to question your sanity.  Did I see snow out there or was it just my imagination? Daylight Savings Time is finally over and the light of day peters out shortly after four o’clock in the afternoon.  People are tired, weary and depressed as they realize it might be time to put their fall jacket away.

That’s not a decision to be made lightly; there’s more to it than just migrating your car keys and pocket change.  It represents a mind shift.  Winter doesn’t just show up here and stay through spring.  It comes and it goes.

We had the most beautiful Halloween weather I can remember in my entire life.  Daniel and I roamed the neighborhood as sunny skies turned into a clear moonlit evening.  I wore a long sleeve shirt, but no jacket.  Daniel complained his vinyl Jango Fett costume was too warm to wear.  The next morning was Daniel’s last flag football game.  I struggled to work my camcorder with numbed hands as the temperature hovered around freezing and the wind whipped across the denuded farm fields surrounding the new junior high school.  My jacket provided me no protection from the elements and I was glad to get home, start the editing process and defrost.  The next afternoon was sunny and downright hot.  Daniel helped me mow the lawn for what I hope is the last time this year.  As we slogged back and forth across the yard, we both ended up taking off our jackets and finishing up the backyard in T-shirts.

Even now, when we’ve had lousy weather consistently for a week or more, there is still that feeling in the back of my mind this could just be temporary.  There may be more Indian Summer left on the calendar.  I’m not the only one who feels this way.  I see people bracing themselves against the winter wind, sleet peppering their faces as they try to wrap their windbreaker around their bodies like a tourniquet.  Is it uncomfortable?  Sure.  But it’s somehow easier to bear than the thought that you will hang up that jacket and not put it on again until sometime in 2009.  That just seems too much like surrender.

The Making of a Rainbow

It was a dark and stormy evening.  I was driving back into Illinois when suddenly everything was bathed in this weird pink light.  At first, I didn’t know what it was coming from; maybe an emergency vehicle?  I looked back and saw it was the sun.  It had peeked underneath the dark storm clouds as it was setting.

Ahead of me, I noticed this squat column of light start to appear in the sky over a clump of trees.  As I watched, it got brighter and more defined.  It stretched and curved.  The column was originally yellowish-white.  Then it swelled wider and divided itself into colors: first red and yellow and then red, yellow and a thin blue stripe.

It was like a growing thing; a sprout from a celestial seed.  The entire process took less than two minutes.

And two minutes after that, it was gone.  The sun had set.