Fuzzy Forecasters

If the prophets at The Farmer’s Almanac are right, it’s going to be a hard winter, at least according to the caterpillars they’ve studied, who are apparently bracing themselves for cold weather. I’m not one to scoff at caterpillars, so I phoned our firewood man and ordered three extra ricks of firewood. There’s an old saying that firewood heats you three times, once when you cut it, then when you split it, and again when you burn it. I skip the first two warmings and content myself with the third. I’m hoping to break a leg in early winter so my wife will have to carry in the firewood from the shed while I sit in my chair next to the woodstove.

Climate change has caused catastrophic weather events — droughts, floods, record heat, a southward shift in America’s Tornado Alley — all of which I could overlook if climate change brought us more snow, the best thing from heaven since manna fell on the Israelites. Alas, the deep snows of my childhood are uncommon these days, a source of some frustration now that I finally have suitable snow gear. Where were Gore-Tex gloves when I was a kid and had to wear brown jersey gloves that froze claw-like in sodden lumps when touched by a single snowflake?

When I was a kid there was only one winter hat available to young males — the bright orange trooper hat with fake fur ear flaps that caused a generation of males to look like Rocket J. Squirrel. Sadly, one was forced to wear this hat just as he was entering puberty, as effective a means of birth control as was ever devised.

Now that I’m old, I have all sorts of snazzy winter hats with no opportunity to wear them. What I wouldn’t give to stroll into a saloon wearing a cowboy hat like Matt Dillon, brushing the snow from my duster coat, stomping the sleet from my boots. Try doing that in a bright orange trooper hat and still seducing a barmaid.

While we’re discussing improvements in winter wear, I should point out that winter footwear has seen much progress since I was a kid. My grandson in Alaska has winter boots that will keep his tootsies warm to –40 degrees Fahrenheit, but when I was his age, I had to wear a thin pair of dress socks, a thick pair of cotton tube socks over them, then Wonder Bread wrappers my mother had saved, with Converse high-top tennis shoes over them. If it were bitterly cold, which it always seemed to be, I had a pair of unlined black rubber buckled snow boots I wore, whose metal buckles clogged with ice and snow and were impossible to unfasten. When I was finally able to pull them off, I had to hold them upside  down and shake out my toes, which had chinked off in the cold. Of my original ten toes, I’m now down to three.

All of this took place back in the days when parents expected kids to stay outside all day no matter how cold it got. Thankfully, I kept warm with a snifter of brandy — which I gave to Mr. Wilson down the street in exchange for sitting in his living room all day watching cartoons. The people who say alcohol doesn’t keep you warm never had Mr. Wilson for a neighbor.

I was looking forward to a snowy winter, but the day after Thanksgiving I saw a caterpillar slip off his fur coat and pull on shorts and a T-shirt. This global warming has gotten ridiculous.

Philip Gulley is a Quaker pastor and author of 22 books, including the Harmony and Hope series, featuring Sam Gardner.

This article is featured in the January/February 2024 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Subscribe to the magazine for more art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives.