THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 8, 1995 TAG: 9501050176
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 14 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: CoastWise
SOURCE: Ford Reid
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
On a holiday trip to visit relatives in Kentucky I was reminded once again why I live here and not there.
It's not just that they don't have an ocean there, although that is a big part of it.
It is not even that the sun shines there for only about ten minutes total between Nov. 1 and April 1, although that is the case.
No, it is not just the ocean and the sunshine that they don't have that bothers me.
It's what they do have. Ice. Snow. Cold.
It isn't that much colder there than it is here. Just enough to make a difference.
I have a friend who, after moving around the country for most of his life, settled a bit south of here. His greatest winter joy is to watch the Weather Channel as the snow piles up in all of the places he used to live.
He likes to watch the subtle shades of purplish gray move across the electronic weather map, secure in the knowledge that that color will never invade his territory.
I don't mind really cold weather. I wouldn't mind living in, say, Halifax, Nova Scotia. In a place like that, you get used to the cold, you prepare for it, it becomes a challenge.
It is the sort-of-cold-much-of-the-time weather that drives me crazy.
No small part of my problem is gloves.
I hate gloves.
I have never been able to work in them. I don't like to drive in them. I can't even think in gloves.
You put on a pair of gloves and your hands become useless. Eons of evolution down the drain. What good are opposing thumbs if you can't use the rest of your hands?
But the real problem with gloves comes when you take them off.
Everything else in the winter wardrobe of necessary gear has a place.
A coat goes on a hanger in the closet. A hat hangs on a peg in the wall. A muffler drapes nicely over a coat hook. Boots sit neatly and ready in a corner of the room.
But where do gloves go?
The only obvious choice is to leave them in the pockets of your coat or jacket.
But what if you have more than one coat?
Then you end up needing your gloves only to discover that you've left them in the pockets of your other coat.
So you buy another pair.
But then as you leave to go out you get confused and, to be sure that you will have gloves if you need them, you take them out of the pockets and carry them.
What happens is this: You end up with both pairs of gloves in the pockets of one coat, then you wear the other coat and again you find yourself without gloves when you need them.
Or you lose one of them. Anything that comes in pairs spells trouble. One glove, like one sock, is much worse than none at all.
There is only one real solution. That is to keep moving south until you find a place where your hands can tolerate whatever cold there is.
I have found my place. by CNB