PREACHER

From page A4

ter sandwiches).

The other time I left the house was Wednesday morning. That’s my “trash day” and I was pretty sure the sanitation crews would not be running but I wanted to go ahead and haul my big blue bin out to the curb just in case, so I put on my heavy winter coat and my gloves and such and headed outside. I immediately began slip-sliding across the lawn. It looked like snow, but it was just several inches of solid frozen ice, and I skated/shuffled to the garbage can… well, almost to the garbage can. I fell right on my butt, which since I was only wearing pajama bottoms meant, I was immediately hit with a cold wet “smack” in a place that I don’t like being cold and/or wet.

Luckily, I was OK, and even more lucky, no one was watching, so there were no witnessed. I managed to get up and get to the trash bin, and using it for leverage, I was able to get to the curb and leave the bin there. I turned back toward the house… and immediately fell on my butt once again. I could just envision one of my neighbors watching my escapades and getting a kick out of it but I once again found my feet and shuffled awkwardly back to the front door.

Inside, my crew were all doing their own thing. My wife was working on some of her stuff as she’s working toward her doctorate. My daughter was doing laundry and watching Netflix and the boyfriend (who, again, is here because it’s “too dangerous” for him to drive home) was working on some of his virtual classwork for one of his college classes. No one had seen me fall, so that was good.

I celebrated my accomplishment by changing into some dry jeans and making a cup of hot tea.

All this snow did remind me of a time that it was the “good” snow, though, back in 2011, when you might recall it snowed like a dozen times. All the way though the winter into spring we got several big snowfalls. Well, during one of those snows, I snapped a few pictures of my kids (above) playing in it and one of them made its way to the front page of the Evening Times. I had only been working there a few months at the time, so it was cool to get them in the paper. I think I still have that paper somewhere…

Now, that was snow fun!

Photo by Ralph Hardin