Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, February 28, 1991                   TAG: 9102270214
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

IT HAS BEEN TRULY A WINTER OF DISCONTENT

Like those cheerful wimps and wimpesses on the City Market who say, "My, isn't this a glorious day for the middle of February?"

Not me, Bunky. Give me a blizzard blowing so hard you can't see Mill Mountain. I want 12 inches by suppertime and still snowing.

I like winter mornings when you go out to start the car to warm it up and the wind is blowing and your hair is still damp from the shower and it freezes in spikes and makes you look funny.

I watch those people on the Weather Channel waving their hands around in front of a map and wait for them to say it's going to snow all over Virginia.

They never do that, of course. As a matter of fact, they don't have a whole lot to say about Virginia unless the jet stream goes through it.

Look at the snow we've had this year: one dinky snow-and-ice storm and a few flurries.

Give me the kind of weather when you get into your four-wheel drive and run up and down the road being smug and ugly to people who are stuck or on the way to being stuck.

I am kind of glad the sewer project on Happy Highfields Road has left a lot of mud on the shoulder of the road.

When nobody is looking, I run the Cherokee through the mud just to give its permanent four-wheel drive a chance to get off the pavement for a change.

I know it's crazy, but I could swear it uses less gas after I steer it into the kind of stuff it was born to run through.

It seems to improve the carburetor, too.

I will not say anything here about the gas-using habits of a permanent four-wheel drive vehicle. I was taught not to make a show of emotions in public.

I like it cold. You can wear all this layered stuff and people can't tell how fat you are - except by counting your chins.

It's no fun when it's 50 outside and the wimpy weather forecast says there's a possibility of thunderstorms. Thunderstorms in February tend to make me nervous and I worry about the ozone hole.

And the chance for some decent winter weather is almost gone - unless March shows it has some guts and gives us some snow.

I have my doubts. In all my years of worrying about the ozone hole, I have seen decent snow in March only once.

I remember that like it was yesterday. There were no thunderstorms to worry about that March, boys.

And I had just one chin, and one 1957 Ford with chains, to my name.