The Smirking Stranger

Earlier in the month I gazed out of the kitchen window and froze for just a moment. As I looked across the street, I saw something standing there just a foot or so back from the curb. I wondered how long it had been there. What did it mean? Had I overlooked it before or was it something new?

There stood a fire hydrant dressed in red, silently smirking back at me. The hydrant had always been there but I paid no attention to it. Now I was struck with fear noticing he was holding something in his hand…or rather behind his back. It was not concealed well as it poked well above his head. It was an antenna like stick protruding skyward…to alert those who needed to know just where the hydrant stands…when the big snow comes.

He's taunting me!

Perhaps I was a bit on edge because the temperatures had dropped recently and the summer ran away so quickly. Or maybe in the back of my mind I am living in fear of my first Minnesota winter because a friend in Chicago felt it necessary to inform me that Eskimos have a million words for snow (slight exaggeration) and perhaps I should start learning them before I moved here. There are no Eskimos in my neighborhood (none that I’ve seen) but then again he was ribbing me about the snow not the natives.

Is the winter that much more epic in Minnesota? I’ve lived in the Midwest my entire life, I can handle a little bit (or a lot) of the white stuff and the cold that goes with it. Most unnerving in this episode is the fact that the candy cane colored rod (have I purchased a house just across the curb from the North Pole?) appeared just after Labor Day. Are we planning on blizzard like conditions in the early Fall? This very well might be common practice in Chicago and Iowa but for some reason it jumped at me this time around.

Better go buy me some new boots…and a snow blower…and enough canned food to survive being homebound for several months.