by Fred Moleck
Winter Travel
On many occasions I was doing God’s work (planning and/or attending national meetings of the FDLC, NAAL, NPM) by traveling to Chicago in December, January, or February.It was always very cold, below freezing, frequently single-digit temperatures, and subzero windchills.
When it would snow, it would snow with great vehemence, breathtaking winds, and the threat of death around the corner. All of these life-threatening situations were because of the dreaded lake effect.
. . . The lake being Lake Michigan, one of the Great Lakes, whose great span of water encourages killer winds and lacks significant mountain ranges that would tend to dissipate the other killer winds.
Another example. In 1965 I was the dude from out of town conducting a series of workshops on the liturgical music reforms in the Diocese of Winona, Minnesota.
The workshops were scheduled during the second week of January. The temperature never rose above 20 degrees below zero. I was the only one who found it unusual.
On the way to the second day of workshops, the car slid off the road because of the snow and ice.
The driver stopped. He and the two other passengers left the car, pushed the car back on the road and we continued. They thought nothing of it.
I thought something of it. I was convinced that our frozen bodies would be found by highway maintenance people sometime in mid April.
All of these experiences have haunted me every time I travel at least forty miles from Pittsburgh from November through February, knowing that I would encounter, once again, killer winds and ice and snow that would, at the least, complicate my life and, at the worst, freeze me out.
Perhaps you are thinking the inconvenience that winter can cause is just one more thing this geriatric columnist can complain about.
No. I also hated winter when I was in third grade. I hated the snow. I hated the snowsuit my mother put me in so I could play in the snow. I hated the snowperson I made out of the snow.
It is not an acquired hatred. It is simply inherent in my DNA.
This week I’ll be in Chicago for my every-so-often visit to GIA and to connect with some friends as we begin the holy season of Lent together.
This week’s visit will cause me to break my solemn vow of January 10. I said to my guardian angel (angels get cold, too, you know) that I would never, never travel to Chicago in the month of January and February.
My return flight that morning was at 8:45 am. To be there at 7:00 am I had to take 5:45 am train from where I was staying.
The windchill rivaled the windchill in the American outpost in Antarctica. I vowed that never, no, never would I put myself through this subzero attack.
No more February jaunts or March jaunts anymore.
April is a good time for travel. You know—“April showers bring May flowers” and all of that.
When one talks about travel and when one talks about April, the memory of Geoffrey Chaucer, the great fourteenth-century writer, looms.
His Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories by the pilgrims on their way to Canterbury in England to pray at the shrine of St. Thomas Becket so that they might be healed of whatever was troubling them.
What follows is a paragraph setting in modern English of the prologue to the Canterbury Tales.
When April with its sweet showers has pierced the drought of March to the root and bathed every vein in such liquor from which the flower will come. When the west wind with its sweet breath has brought forth young shoots from every grove and field, the tender crops . . . and especially from every county on England pilgrims would make the journey to Canterbury to pray to the holy, blissful martyr when they were “seke.”
April in England. April in Paris. April in Chicago, April in Pittsburgh . . . but first we must get through March, and for church musicians, Lent and then Triduum and then Easter’s Great Fifty Days.
Stay warm.
You can reach Fred Moleck via email at fmoleck@comcast.net