Spring Fever! (Or is it late Winter madness?)

This time of year can be pretty tough.  Winter is almost over, but Spring just isn’t here yet.  Winter hasn’t actually been that bad this year.  It’s been cold, but not too much sub-zero, snow, but only a few real blizzards.  But it’s sure been long.  Here it is St. Patrick’s Day and the temperature is still hovering right around freezing and there’s still lots of snow on the ground.  Everyone is just tired of it, it’s called Spring fever.

There are several things to look out for when Spring Fever strikes.  The most common is wishing that Spring will come so much that you finally convince yourself that it is here already.  My buddy Lou got a new fishing boat over the Winter, and he already wanted to take it out to check how the new motor runs.  Even though the temperature of the air was in the 30’s he said we could just take it out for a quick spin.  This is a shakedown cruise, what if something goes wrong? Sitting in a boat waiting for someone to tow you in isn’t too painful in the middle of a sunny Summer day, but it could get pretty cold waiting out there now.  Plus how long would you wait now, there are probably very few boaters out on a day like this.  What if it started to sink?  The water would be freezing; I mean this has the makings of a Readers Digest “drama in real life.”

Another problem this time of year are the leftovers from the Winter storms.  Just today the fellow that works behind the store tried to drive his four wheel drive pickup truck through the alley behind the store.  The snow was much deeper than he thought and had the general consistency of wet cement.  Needless to say he got stuck.  He dug and dug, and I was on the verge of getting the Jeep out to try to pull him back out when he finally got it moving again.  It took a couple tries, but he finally rocked it loose.

Luckily while he was back there nothing fell on him.  We get giant icicles on the back of the store building and today was just warm enough to start to bring them down.  The big ones are still up there, but a few of the smaller ones let go.  A few years ago a huge one fell right on our truck dock.  It must have weighed a thousand pounds.  It flattened the dock, breaking the two by twelves like they were matchsticks.  I have to walk right under them when I’m working out back, I just try to duck through quickly and hope my luck holds.

I just looked at the 10 day weather forecast and it looks like we’re in for a slow warming trend.  Hopefully this is really Spring, but I’m not counting on it yet, at the Old Hardware Store…