Took Rebecca and Anton to lunch at Zocalo today. She, Joe and the kids are visiting Atlanta, and she wanted to get together. So I bought lunch, plus a pitcher of margaritas. Coffee afterward at Caribou across the street. After saying goodbye to Anton and Rebecca, I decided to walk the long way home, up across Piedmont Park and down through our neighborhood. A gloriously beautiful day. It reminded me of a similar winter day 38 winters ago.
I had met Herb at a meeting in New Orleans and stopped off in Birmingham on my way home to interview with him for the postdoctoral position I later took. Mid-February, a beautiful day just like today. There was no way I was going to to to Birmingham -- Birmingham ALABAMA??? This was only seven years after Bombingham Sunday. And the steel mills were still tossing tens of tons of crud up into the sky every day.
When I flew back to New Hampshire that night, I missed my connection at La Guardia. Had to go down to -- what was it called? the Ferry Terminal? -- in downtown Manhattan, to catch a bus to White River Junction. It was the last bus, a milk run, so it stopped at every little town along the way. I got into White River about 2 am, and Gayle picked me up and drove us back to Sachem Village. Getting out of the car into the moonlit 15 degree night, with the world crunchy and cold beneath my feet, I thought, hey, maybe Alabama might not be so bad after all...
The next year, in midwinter, I flew from Birmingham to a meeting in Minneapolis. Landing at O'Hare, I looked out the window of the plane to see snow blowing horizontally across the hard, cold runway and thought, how did I ever live in this climate?
Today, January 23, the unofficial first day of spring. I do love the South!
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