The simple joy of snow

I love the snow.
I love how it forces us to slow down and take pause.
I especially love how a good snowfall puts Washington, D.C. into panic mode, as it has again this week, causing federal office buildings to shut down.
I lived in the D.C. region for about eight years and the response to snow in the nation’s capital was way different from how it is in places like Pittsburgh.
You see, Washington, D.C. is full of self-appointed experts who are eager to tell the rest of us how to live.
These uber-smart people can’t stop meddling with our appliances, furnaces, air conditioners and water heaters — they keep driving up the cost of every one of them with their never-ending mandates.
But when a few flakes of snow fall on the ground, they fall to pieces.
That’s because they lack the common sense of people from the Midwest — what they refer to as “Flyover Country.”
And so it is that the same people who tell us that toilet paper and bottled water are ruining the environment flock to supermarkets to hoard toilet paper and bottled water.
Washingtonians aren’t used to having to deal with reality.
In Washington, a lobbyist can make a fine living by spewing out bogus numbers and arguments to convince policymakers to write laws that favor the organizations he represents.
Our government doesn’t care much for reality, either. If it needs more money, it just prints more.
When our lawmakers gave us an ethanol-subsidies program that screwed up our corn market and drove up food costs, were there consequences?
Nope, just a couple of shoulder shrugs and some comments about their intentions being good.

Outside of Washington, D.C., however, people have no choice but to live in reality.
When record snows fall in the heartland of America, a person’s first instinct is to do what he must to keep the snow from affecting his family’s wellbeing.
We Pittsburghers know we can’t control the cold and snow, but we can control how we respond to them. And we respond with joy.
Our kids immediately appear atop the steepest hills with a variety of sledding devices, then spend many hours letting nature whip them down the slope.
Our grownups happily abandon their typical routines to clear the driveways of our elderly neighbors or bring them a pot of soup.
Then we clear our sidewalks and driveways so the postal carrier or Amazon driver doesn’t fall.
We are invigorated by the crisp air and a good sweat. We rarely miss the opportunity to engage in snowball contests, no matter our age.
We do this because the snow brings out the best in us.
As I write this column, my entire yard, and all of the woods that surround it, are coated with a thick layer of snow.
My four-year-old labrador, Thurber, is happy to go outside and play on any occasion, but there is something about the snow that brings out even more joy in him — an infectious joy that makes me laugh out loud.
And since I planned ahead for the realities of winter — my snowblower is tuned and my 4×4 Toyota truck eats snow-covered roads for lunch — I haven’t a worry in the world.
Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for this snow-loving Midwesterner to go outside and toss my dog his favorite ball!

Copyright 2025 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.