Blog 3497 – 05.31.2025

On This, The Last Day of May

Today is the last day in the month of May and even people who choose to live in northern climates are beginning to experience the warmer days of what looks to be a long hot summer. I have lived most of my life in the Deep South and some of my fondest memories are of working up north especially during the cooler months.

We experience very little winter weather in Houston, Texas where I have spent most of my life. I grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee except for a couple of years as a small boy that my family moved to Detroit, Michigan for my daddy’s work and to be near my mom’s dad, my Paw Paw, and his second wife Lilly, and their children.

I often wonder since I have no recollections of living in Detroit, only memories of stories that parents shared with me, if those winters near Lake Michigan made me consider myself a Yankee Boy or if I indeed was one in a former life.

I was, as the song Dixie says, born in Dixieland on a frosty morning, Wednesday November 22, 1950. And for most of my young life autumn was my favorite season. Though my mother always hated the approach of winter and could not wait for the red, red robins to appear with the promise of Spring, I, even then, looked forward to winter and was thrilled with every Snow Day.

Chattanooga has four pretty much equal seasons unlike Houston and northern cities like Detroit that have longer summers and longer winters respectively. In one of my favorite movies, The Legends of the Fall, Miss Susannah Kincaid, fiancée of Samuel Ludlow, comes west on the train to Montana from New England, where they had met at university, to meet his father and older brothers. She remarks to Alfred, the oldest brother, how beautiful Montana is and refers to it as “This gift.” Alfred replies that she might not see it as such a gift four months in to a long winter.

Winters in the far north are often five or six months long with RV Camper parks many, if not all of them depending upon on how far north you are, closing the first day of November and not re-opening till the first day of April. Even then the temperatures in October and April are often cold enough to freeze the water lines requiring campers to use the campground shower house for the necessaries.

Trekking to the shower house in a half foot of snow or more are some of those fond memories I mentioned above.

I Miss The Winters

I miss the northern winters

With their icicles and snow,

The trees all dressed in white,

Temps down to zero and below

Some people prefer the summers

With longer days and shorter nights

But, me, I rather prefer the opposite,

Per chance to see the Northern Lights.

On this, last day of May, I am reminded that all four season have their points. I cannot help that my internal compass points north. Here is to a long hot summer with an equally cold and snowy winter with those lovely months in between when the trees are dressed in spring blossoms or the flaming colored leaves of fall.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David James White