Bob Collins
Photo: Bob Collins
Dear Minnesota:
I’m sorry. I got angry with you and, really, it was my fault. For someone who spends most of the winter posting about embracing you, I turned away from you when you needed me most — spring. We all have our little tantrums and when I said in April that I’d one day “leave this godforsaken place where it snows in May,” it was my fault.
I have a friend or two who put their home up for sale on the spur of the moment around that time and they’ve left town and headed south. You know, where it’s warmer and sunnier and all. I see the humidity is 74 percent there today. I almost caved in to my pals from Phoenix who reminded me all during February that it was sweater season — the temperature might drop to 75 overnight. It’s 91 there at 9 a.m. But it’s a dry hell, you know.
Even one of my own grown kids is talking about leaving and I’ve debated whether it’s time to have “the talk” — the one where I suggest before he go, he take a long look at what he’d be leaving.
He’d leave something like this morning. I get up at sunrise on weekends in your summer. I don’t want to waste a moment. The paper was late, so it was just me, the Blog Dog, a good aviation magazine, my friends on Twitter and Facebook.
And there I sat with them and you for more than four hours, occasionally watching the ducks fly over, listening to the birds, and not hearing any neighbors in my suburb. They’ve probably left for their lake places, in search of you, apparently.
You test our faith at times and sometimes we are weak. But you reward us on Saturday mornings in July and we renew our commitment to be strong with each breeze you send that says, “hey, I’m up here.”
Bring the heat, bring the storms, and wind, and then snow if you must. Just give us a July Saturday morning like one you gave us this year, just once in awhile.
We can’t quit you. Don’t ever change.
Love,
NewsCut
