Good Mornin’! Good Mornin’!
March is here. But how the heck did it come in? Like a lion? A lamb? Depends on your definition of each, I’d reckon.
March in the Delta can mean ice storms to rainstorms with the anniversary of jumping into this pandemic.
Heck, when I was five, we got a foot of snow in March.
And just where is this new normal the folks in charge keep talking about?
It’s just wake up and prepare yourself for just about anything to happen with your whole closet at your disposal.
Shorts and t-shirts on February 4th with 64 degrees to where the heck is that long underwear just a week later with a high of 35.
The we found ourselves in 19 degrees and lower and trying to keep the water running and power on while fighting an ice storm.
Oh, then it was back to fishing weather with 72 degrees on the 23rd.
Who made Mother Nature mad this time? As I tap this out, I’m reading reports of sleet and rain…geez…I hope it wasn’t me.
Sunflower County thawed out from the winter fun and now is drenched in rain making it hard on two spring traditions – planting crops and playing baseball.
The in-state college boys figured how to make it to Texas to show the world just what Rebels and Bulldogs can do on the diamond.
Locally, high school baseball has been pushed back to spring break before the familiar sounds of aluminum bats and makeshift right and left-field lounges come to life.
You can’t swing a bat very well with frozen hands but Reggie Jackson seemed to do that quite well each October.
There’s supposed to be ice in your ice chests and red solo cups and not on your favorite IA hat and winter coat while trying to catch an errant foul ball or home run.
But it’s Mother Nature. There’s nothing anyone can ever do.
Complain a little, make adjustments, grin and bear it, persevere but in the end, get the job done and hopefully the scoreboard is in your favor. Oh, and you didn’t lose your warm gloves.
Farmers are used to battling Mother Nature to get another crop in the ground.
They become more like the post office than the post office it seems.
With so many post offices closed during the ice storm it was pretty much un-American to stop the flow of mail – junk and all.
But nothing stops a farmer.
Oh, the rain and wind and sleet and snow may make it interesting but they plow on and get corn, cotton, soybeans and rice in the dirt somehow and start watching the futures markets and paying attention to Mother Nature’s mood swings and praying to coax her into level-headed amounts of rain and sunshine in alternating and beneficial stages.
We fight through March to get to spring break, to hopefully find a warm spot to re-invent our sunburn lines and bring home a memory and a few small pieces of junk to remind us of warmer climates when needed.
Hopefully, after next week, we’ll all come back sun scorched and a good kind of tired with new stories to tell in left and right field with the only ice coming from Sonic and the ice chest.
Play ball, y’all!
