Do you ever remember it being cold in southwest Georgia?

If you are getting close to retirement age, you probably do.

When my age group was coming up, we had some cold winters. We didn’t have to walk to school barefoot and home uphill both ways in the snow or anything like that, but it was certainly colder than the winter we have had during the last 30 years or so. And maybe we are going to record a winter this time similar to the ones we enjoyed as children. I had rather we would have just a week or two of the really cold weather and be mild the rest of the winter.

January of 2010 started out on a cold note and the song hasn’t changed. Thru this writing, it has stayed cold and the weather folks say that at least the first third of the month is going to be a cold one. Some are leaning toward the first half of January as being colder than average.

All it takes is for the jet stream to get below us and we can have weather that is usually reserved for the northern states. Already we have had temperatures in the teens and lower teens in some areas. The weather folks say that it doesn’t really matter what the temperature is, what matters is what it feels like, the wind chill. We have had some days already when the chill felt like it was getting close to single-digit temperatures.

As a kid I remember temperatures getting down to 8 and 9 degrees in the neighborhood and another time that it was supposed to get down as low as 2 degrees. I can’t swear that it did, but it was so cold that we weren’t allowed to go outside.

Many other times it got down to the lower teens and upper teens was common a few times during the winter. Some of the older folks that believed in signs said that the weather started changing and not for the better when they landed folks on the moon. I don’t really believe that, but they haven’t sent anyone else up there for a long time. The weather is going to be what it is going to be, and someone a lot higher than I will decide what that is going to be.

The weather for all time is in cycles. Some cycles are longer than others while some may be deeper than others. If we wait long enough, history will likely repeat itself as will the cycles of the weather. It may not be a complete mirror image, but it will likely resemble itself so that even us old earthlings will recognize it.

I went to the tackle show I mentioned last week in Philadelphia, Miss. It was an eight-hour drive and no playing around, or it would have taken longer. That was eight hours back and nine hours out there. Would you believe I ran out of gas. As cheap as gas is and I ran out.

I pulled off the road in an area that was still fairly wet from the recent rains and slipped farther into the ditch at a very severe angle. My buddy, Mike, was scared to get out because he thought he might turn the truck over. He said if big William was with us the truck would have already turned over and killed us all. We stood by the road for a while until a Baptist preacher stopped and offered to get us a gallon of gasoline. He did and the F-150 started right up and nearly jumped out of the ditch, ready to hunt for more fuel.

We watched it snow while we were there and watched the temperature drop into the lower teens. Since it was almost as cold here at home, it really didn’t make that much difference where I was, so we just enjoyed what we had and it had ice on it.

Speaking of enjoying something, my youngest granddaughter, Kaylee, 3 years old, visited the other side of her family in Jesup right after Christmas and got into a small amount of trouble along with her 4-year-old cousin. These two took a big container of brownies into the 4-year-old’s room, locked the door and proceeded to devour them. I wish I had been there. I can fix the door so that it stays locked. They didn’t and got caught.