It's a Marshmallow World

It happened a little early this year, and the old-timers sat and shook their shaggy heads and thought of seasons past, times remembered.

There was a time when it always came into our lives by Veterans’ Day, and we accepted our fates, trudging along back to our meager huts in the lengthening shadows. Just as back-to-school pants purchased for adolescents in August are ankle-revealers by November, we accepted the inevitable. When it came, mothers held the young ones just a little tighter, and fathers donned the extra apparel required and headed out to face the enemy, the little muscles in their jaws rippling as they girded their loins.

And heaven knows we can’t have an ungirded loin around here, can we now?

Times changed and we grew up, and it seemed as though the seasons changed with us. Oh, we had joy, and we had fun, and we had seasons in the sun, just like in the song, only not quite so carefree, because we always had one eye looking over our shoulder and the other tuned to channel 62.

The Weather Channel.

Soundgarden did that song called “Black Hole Sun.”

We are speaking of White Hell Snow, as Baltimore regards it.

We have a curious relationship with snow. Why, just the other day, I was watching a televised football match from Pittsburgh, a gritty industrial city hard by a river, and there was snow coming down on the fans and the players alike, and yet there was no sign of people leaving the stadium once the first flakes wafted earthward. Here in Charm City, why, we have our tv news reporters standing alongside all major highways and atop key bridges (bad pun alert!) the day BEFORE snow might begin falling; I guess this is to give us a baseline measurement of non-snow-clogged traffic, against which to gauge the next day.

Of course, traffic reports on television news are only good if you happen to be driving a car while watching television, and if that’s the case, you’re probably going to be ON the traffic report before too long.

Yesterday, we had some snowflakes fall on us, and one could hear the cry, the muttering, the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth (is there anything else gnashable besides teeth?) that rings throughout our town all winter long: B.M.T!

BMT can mean so many things elsewhere – Behavior Management Therapy, Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit, Bilateral Myringotomy Tympanostomy (heaven forbid!), Big Mothereffin’ Truck (again!) –but here, it’s sort of a code, meaning "got to get down to the Try ‘N’ Save and stock up on BREAD, MILK and TOILET PAPER!"

According to local lore, back in the day, a sudden snowstorm came along and no one was able to get out to the U-Bag-It for days and days. Children were forced to eat peanut butter and jelly right out of the jar and drink Hi-C Orange, Almond Smash, NeHi Grape and other revolting soda pops, resulting in a collective sugar high that was not resolved until the good people at Boone’s Farm brought their fruit-flavored goodness along.

And as for TP – well, they had the Mongomery Wards catalog back then. I don’t know what we’d use now. I mean, Sunday and Thursday we have the Examiner, but that leaves five days a week…Better head to the Pay-No-More.