by
Duffy Perkins
Prop Thoughts
Is It Spring Yet?
An essay on the weather in which the words “polar vortex” are not mentioned once.
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rowing up in Northern would often follow closely behind him. Michigan, I was accustomed You don’t hear Capt. Eddie complaining. to leaving the faucets dripThere are, of course, the Darwin ping when I went to sleep at night. I Award Winners for those who decided helped my brother spray paint Styrofoam to roll the dice when it came to winterizballs bright yellow, and we attached ing their boats. A marina in the Narthese to car antennae so that they’d be rows brought out the Sandusky to help seen from behind snow banks. I’ve waited for a school bus in -19 degree weather and lived to tell the tale. And I’ve told that tale to multiple therapists, whenever I’m asked about my relationship with my mother. So possibly because of all of that “character development,” I’m not particularly fond of listening to folks kvetch on and on about how this winter has been so darn cold. Yes, it’s ##Photo by Beth Crabtree cold. But you’re the idiot who refuses to wear long underwear because it adds an extra five pounds out a boat that was iced in at the dock to your frame. and taking on water. Dave Hannam at At the Maryland Department of Chesapeake Watercraft Restoration was Natural Resource’s office of Hydrocalled in to assist on a fiberglass Trojan graphic Engineering and Ice Breaking whose owner went down to the dock and Operations, no one has time to comfound it frozen. Hannam worked with a plain about the weather, because they’re dipstick heater to heat the oil, but then all too busy dealing with it. Standing found that the sea cocks were frozen in behind a fleet of four ice breakers is the open position. After taking a torch to John Gallagher, who coordinates with the through hull, Hannam got the boat watermen, marinas, and even school thawed out, much to the owner’s appredistricts to make sure the ice doesn’t ciation. “It would have cost him $5000 become insurmountable. When the Bay if that boat had sunk, but instead it cost started freezing over, the Kent Narrows him three quarts of oil. I’m happy. That’s dredging project was 90% complete. The one less boat on the bottom,” he says. A.V. Sandusky was brought in to alleviate In Punxsutawney, PA, ten thousand the hold up, keeping the ice away and people gathered on a wintery February the Narrows open so that the dredging morning to watch a rodent be pulled contractor could finish off the project. out of a cage and determine whether or On the J.M. Tawes, which runs out of not he saw his shadow. A tradition since Crisfield, Capt. Eddie Somers got into 1887, it was recorded as the 101st time the habit of spending the night on Smith the groundhog has seen his shadow, Island to make sure he could maintain a sending us home with six more weeks track each day for the school ferry, which of winter. All I can say to that is that on
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page 22 of this magazine, Allison Nataro has written an article about better things to do with animals like Phil. In comparing winters, Bay Country residents love to harken back to the winter of 1977, when the Bay froze over entirely and caused much of Maryland to come to a screeching halt. In his first week in office, President Carter declared Maryland and Virginia disaster areas. Over 5000 watermen were out of work, spiking the prices of a bushel of oysters to $10 (roughly $37.50 in today’s market). Bethlehem Steel shut down its shipyard for days on end, and the cutter ships were the only things able to operate on the Bay. Whether one winter is worse than the next is all subjective, really. But throughout it all, the one certainty is that the winter is bound to end sometime. The socks will be burnt, the gin and tonics will be poured, and we’ll all start complaining about cutting the grass. Before this time is lost, before the bitter cold disappears and the ice melts, don’t you want to enjoy it? Go sledding one more time with the kids, pour a hot toddy before you hit the sheets, wear your favorite sweater before it gets packed away for the next ten months. It will be over before you know it; you may as well enjoy it. A co-worker’s husband came into the office earlier in the week to drop off some food, and as we chatted, I looked at him funny and asked, “Do you have a black eye?” “Yup,” he said. “I do. Got it when I jumped in front of a puck playing pond hockey,” he said. Honestly, some people just have the right idea.
PropTalk March 2014 11