It's not exactly a secret that I loathe winter and cold weather.
After all, I rant about it in this space almost every day from Halloween to Easter.
But I have to admit that every year something happens related to my cold-weather travails that brings a smile to my face. Every time we get a big snow storm, I break out my winter shoes. A moderate snow calls for my low-cut work shoes that I picked up years ago at Kmart. They are your basic steel-toed work shoe. Really heavy storms means I break out the boots.
But before I don any winter-weather footwear, I have to do something else. I dig through the closet every fall in order to find the blue thermal socks I utilize every winter.
This is not just any pair of socks.
To me they hold a special meaning, reminding me of a time and a place - really a life - far, far away.
That's because I bought them in 1976.
As a newly minted resident of Colorado, I purchased those socks at the same time I plunked down my hard-earned dollars for a pair of Lange skis and yellow Caber ski boots.
Here's where the story gets weird, or maybe I should say weirder.
I had never skied in my life before I went to Colorado. During the three and a half years I spent in the Rockies, I skied religiously every week in the winter. Usually a gang of us headed for the hills every Monday. We all worked in a restaurant, actually the Denver Mariott. We were off on Monday, which also happens to be the best day of the week to ski. There were no crowds. You would ski down the hill and right back onto the lift for your next run.
How long ago was this? Well, I'm about to break the heart of skiing fans around here. We used to ski Copper Mountain, Winter Park and Breckinridge for $10.
Yeah, times have changed.
Something else has changed as well.
When I packed all my wordly belongings into the back of a pickup truck and pointed it east on I-70 to head home in August 1978, I did not realize I was leaving something else behind as well.
I have not been on skis since I got back.
Don't ask me why. I'm not really sure. For some reason, skiing here in Pennsylvania is just not the same as it is in Colorado. I have no desire to ski on ice. People don't believe me when I tell them that one of the worst sunburns I ever received was during a weekend spent at Vail. Or that we would take part in a spring fling at the A-Basin ski resort each year. Now you have to realize that the parking lot at A-Basin is above the tree line. It is usually the first hill to open and the last to close. Each spring, they throw a shindig where guys ski in cut-offs and girls hit the hills in bikinis.
And I did all that while sporting those old blue thermal socks.
Now every winter, while I curse this weather, I have to admit I crack a smile every time I don those warm old standbys. They now have holes in them, but I don't dare throw them out. So they're more then three decades old. They have plenty of life left.
Even as they remind their owner of a life long ago.
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