If you live east of the Mississippi River far enough north where palm trees do not grow here in the United States, then you likely got hit with the big snow blizzard over the weekend. Last Monday morning, I was shoveling snow out of my driveway insofar as it got to be too much strain on my body in that I was shoveling layers and layers of snow to create a pathway for everyone to walk from the sidewalks right up to my front door.
By Tuesday morning, everything white that was still on my driveway turned into a thick sheet of ice. To make matters worse, additional layers of snow had fallen after I had finished shoveling snow for the day the day before. I was going to need an icepick to do anything about it, but I didn't want to mess up the concrete of my driveway. I figured that it wasn't worth it.
So, it looks like I'm snowbound in my residence for at least a week. The temperature is going to remain in the teens or the twenties for the rest of the week.
The only way I could pull my car out of the garage would be to step down on the gas pedal and zoom over all the hardened snow. Then I'd have to zoom the car over a near mountain of snow beyond my driveway to get to the part of my street that the snow plows have cleared away. The lyrics of the song below began to play in my mind.
The Song Titled "California Dreaming" By The Mamas And The Papas
Would you believe that I wanted to use that song on my announcement for my answering machine when I was first living in Los Angeles? I did not miss winter weather all seven years that I lived there.
It then dawned on me that I should never have left Los Angeles, or least Southern California. In the winter months there, the only snow that I ever usually saw was in the distance on the peaks of the San Gabriel Mountains while I stood on the balcony outside my apartment in my short pants and short-sleeved shirts. The most Earthshattering news about a winter snowstorm out there would be for Los Angeles residents not to drive through the mountains where it was snowing.
During all seven years that I lived in Los Angeles, it never snowed down where I was even once. I lived near the beach back then, and I could actually go sunbathing on the beach in January, believe it or not. The earthquakes were the most dramatic natural events in my seven years of living out there.
I'm not even originally from Southern California, and yet I feel homesick for that place whenever the weather gets nasty in the wintertime where I'm now living. Imagine that. Before I moved out to the West Coast, I was living in New York City; and I never get homesick for that place. Then again, who ever does? Unless you're a native New Yorker, that is.
Sure. Los Angeles had much of the same hustle and bustle as New York City did. However, you didn't have to deal with bitterly cold winds there in Los Angeles or slippery ice on the sidewalks in the winter months. It seldom ever got colder than 70 degrees Fahrenheit in the daytime there. Sometimes I wish I could have those climatic goodies in life again.
You never really hear anyone say, "Why, oh, why, oh, why, oh, why did I ever leave Ohio?" except in the Broadway musical Wonderful Town. However, nobody ever gets Southern California out of their system regardless of whether or not they were born there and grew up there. Once you've lived there, it becomes a regular part of your identity.
Ironically, during the seven years that I lived in Los Angeles, I actually found myself becoming intrigued about moving to Alaska to work in the fish factories. A co-worker of mine, who was originally from New York, talked me out of it. I'm glad that he did so. It probably would have been the biggest mistake of my life.
In Whittier, Alaska, there is actually an entire town that lives inside a large building. I can assure you that it's not as warm there in that part of the world as it is in Whittier, California, where novelist John Saul lives.
Inside that building in Whittier, Alaska, the occupants have a post office, a grocery store, a laundromat, and everything else you can imagine. The residents there hardly ever leave the building, especially during the brutally cold winter months. If you don't believe me, watch the video below.
An Alaska Town Is All Inside One Building
The biggest worry that the people that live inside this building-town have is what to do if they should experience a power outage in the dead of winter. Then again, they probably have an emergency generator to rescue them from the deadly cold if something that Earthshattering were to occur. There's also likely zero crime there.
A few weeks ago I was watching a video on YouTube about Yellowknife, Canada, which is the most Northern city in that nation. It's the hometown of the late Margot Kidder, who played the role of Lois Lane in the 1978 movie version of Superman. You know. The one in which the late Christopher Reeve starred as Superman. It's so sad how these actors and actresses pass away way too soon.
Anyhow, I found myself gradually falling in love with the place without ever having gone there. In fact, I've never even been to Canada. They speak eleven languages there. Hmmm. I thought that English and French were the only two official languages of Canada. Everything looks clean there.
The name of the Canadian province where Yellowknife is, is named the Northwest Territories. You got it. It doesn't even sound like the name of a Canadian province or a U.S. state, but that's what it's called.
After the snow blizzard came storming into where I now live here in the United States, all previous interest I had in going to Yellowknife vanished into thin air immediately. They have a housing crisis and a shortage of employment up there.
Yellowknife is so not a place to be jobless and homeless. Then again, no place fits that description anywhere in the world except perhaps Saudi Arabia where the government gives unemployed citizens some kind of Universal Basic Income to keep them out of the poor house or off the streets.
The very last time that I ever went to my dentist while I was still living in Los Angeles, California, one of the employees there had gotten off work the same time that I was walking home. He was originally from Guatemala and liked to be sociable with the patients. One pressing question that he asked me was whether I would ever return to Southern California after I moved east.
I responded to him that I would do so, but I would likely not return to Los Angeles but rather live elsewhere in Southern California. He laughed and told me that he had gotten that same response from almost everyone he had ever asked that same question.
Well, today as I look out from my windows on all the nasty snow and ice, I might just have the right mind to move back to Los Angeles after all. Even though it was a tough town to live in, I cannot deny that I had good times there. I even got to be an extra in a handful of movies. I didn't reach the level of stardom that I wanted, but, hey, perhaps my writing will make that dream possible for me someday.
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