COLUMN: Summer daydreaming

It was just a few weeks ago that I was pondering winter and wondering why it hadn’t arrived in this neck of the woods.

Mid-January and just a few total inches of snow for the season? Temperatures in the 50s and 60s at Christmas?

No ice and snow-packed roads leading to and from the various towns throughout the Sanders and Mineral County countryside that I repeatedly navigate on my way to cover high school sports from Alberton to Noxon?

And now, just a bucket full of days after those naive thoughts, the hot water in my house was frozen. The cold water still worked, but that needed to be heated in a big, aluminum cooking pot, then dumped over my head via an oversized coffee mug while I was standing in the tub taking what I referred to as a “pioneer” shower.

Now, just two days after the hot water pipes thawed, both hot and cold are off in the whole neighborhood due to a broken water main somewhere down the street.

What could I do?

I quickly turned to my escape thoughts and memories from winters past, it will soon be baseball time.

Before you know it, we will be sitting in the stands fanning ourselves with game programs as the hot sun beats down and heat ripples rise off the infield dirt.

In my home town of Billings, it meant it was time to get out the old, raggedy baseballs and go down to Cobb Field, one block south of my dad’s neighborhood grocery store (which was attached to our house).

If the raggedly baseballs got wet, we didn’t care. They were water-logged when we found them.

There were occasions where winter snow melt left behind puddles at third base that were, quite literally, big enough to attract ducks returning from lands to the south. The outfield grass in the old “practice” field where we played, often after climbing a fence and keeping an eye out for the crabby old “park ranger”, was spongy wet like high mountain tundra moss.

We didn’t care.

Months of shivering while delivering the Billings Gazette early in the winter mornings and trudging to school through mid-calf high snow were quickly becoming distant memories.

The early February sun made it feel like it was 75 degrees when in reality it was probably just above freezing. Wind chill was forgotten as heavy coats were shed and tossed aside.

The crack of the bat soon replaced the crunch of frozen mud puddles.

Summer was on the doorstep.

I will always equate the end of winter with the sights and sounds of players getting in those early season at bats. Falling down in the outfield chasing a pop fly produced soaked clothes.

We didn’t care.

We were the boys of summer….in February.

Soon those experiences will break out all over this area. These winter storms and polar vortex days with a minus before the temperature number will become distant memories.

The sounds of lawn mowers coughing to life will replace the sound of shovels scrapping sidewalks and driveways.

And baseball, good old, dependable, always there like the morning sun baseball, will be sprouting to life like daffodils peeking through the last piles of snow.

In these parts, baseball practice will fill recently dormant fields with the sights, sounds and smells of America’s game.

How cold was it in the last weeks of December?

We don’t care.

Welcome back old friend, I’ve missed you. Feels warmer just thinking about you!