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Rx for NJ
Winters--Move South
MARCH 31, 2004
By
GREGORY J. RUMMO
I HAVE
A good friend whose name is coincidentally the same as mine.
You might say I have known him all my life. We are so much
alike it is frightening. We even look alike.
Greg is a conservative guy.
Married with three kids and a fourth on the way, he’s not
the type to take risks. He is neither a flashy dresser nor
flamboyant in his lifestyle.
But last year I started
noticing some changes that made me wonder if Greg wasn’t in
the beginning phase of a mid-life crisis of sorts.
The first tip-off was when
he traded in his big, comfy 8-cylinder German SUV for a much
smaller convertible.
“How do you expect to fit
your ever-growing family into that thing?” I asked him with
a look that betrayed my incredulity.
“I’m not,” he answered
matter-of-factly. “That’s what the Chrysler Town and Country
is for. Even if I bought a regular sedan, I still wouldn’t
be able to fit the whole family in it.”
I couldn’t argue with that
logic even though I wondered what an almost 50-year old was
doing with a BMW 3-series ragtop.
“So why a convertible?” I
continued.
“Why a convertible…at my
age? Hmmmm?” He shot back with a slight edge to
his voice. “Isn’t that what’s really bugging you?”
“Well, yeah—sort
of—although it doesn’t bug me. I was just wondering
what the thought process was behind buying a convertible
now.
“It’s not what you think,”
Greg said with a nervous chuckle. “Age has nothing to do
with it although indirectly it is a factor.”
“Oh? How so?” I pressed.
“I have always wanted a
convertible,” he explained. “But living in the northeast
with the long, cold winters, it just never seemed to be
worth it. But now I find as I approach 50, time just seems
to fly. The winters don’t seem as long as they used to. But
when they end—Oh thank God that they finally do come to an
end—I just can’t wait to ride around with the top down and
get some sun on my face—especially after this year’s winter.
It was a doozy.”
Greg’s reaction to this
past winter is not anomalous. Everyone I spoke with for this
column was relieved that spring has finally arrived.
There was some real emotion
out there—beyond what I would normally expect to hear from
the mouths of winter-hardened New Jerseyans.
“Are you glad winter is
over?” I asked the guy sitting next to me on a recent flight
from Newark to Kansas City.
“Absolutely,” came the
immediate reply.
“Why?” I queried further.
“Heating bills,” he
snapped.
“Is that the only reason?”
“Heating bills,” he
repeated with more emphasis—and shoveling snow.”
The complainers were
everywhere. From the breakfast counter at the Hen’s Roost in
Oakland, a frequent eatery for me and my son, to the
veterinarian’s office, of all places, vitriol-laced
diatribes about last winter were easily elicited.
“I moved to Gatlinburg in
Tennessee,” a woman told me in the waiting room. I am sick
of the winters up here.” Another chimed in: “I am moving to
Ocala in Florida. I have just about had enough of winters in
New Jersey.”
It was a cold winter and I
don’t care what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration has to say about whether it was only the
sixth or the tenth coldest winter on record. For three weeks
in January, the northeast was held in the icy grip of arctic
air that kept temperatures hovering in the single digits.
We all suffered. People
were screaming “uncle” by February—at least I think they
were screaming “uncle.” None of them poked their heads
outside of their cozy, warm homes long enough for me to
verify that theory.
Even my snowboard-obsessed
son, who spent seven hours every Monday afternoon and
evening on the slopes of Mountain Creek in Vernon admitted
to me in a weak moment of candor that he was ready for the
warmer weather.
“So Greg, when are you
moving to Florida?” I ask innocently.
Greg just smiles. Suddenly, he’s not talking.
n
Gregory J. Rummo is a
syndicated columnist. Read all of his columns on his homepage,
www.GregRummo.com. E-Mail Rummo at GregoryJRummo@aol.com
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