Hey from Charlotte!

From the collection, 'Letters to Jo Ann.' 

Hey from Charlotte!

Man I glad to be back down in the south where they call 40 degrees cold! I ask them in Maine why they bothered with the zero when it got so much colder than that, they said, “Zero defines the seasons, in the summer it’s above zero, in the winter, it ain’t.” Up in Maine I spit 0n the ground and instead of splat! I got plink, plink, dink, dink, crack, shatter. It’s the only place I’ve been where you can spit in your hand and throw a rock! At least in the south the kids have to find a damn rock before they can throw it. 

It was so cold I had to put the anti-freeze in the coffee, and the engine, you just don’t dare kill it! I sneezed on the guy next to me, and they took him to the hospital for shotgun wounds. 

It was so damn cold you could get a ticket for driving drunk on the lake. Not because you were on the lake, but because you were drunk. The traffic on the lake was so heavy they had traffic signs. ‘Caution, fishing village ahead,’ and you’re miles from shore.

But the people of Maine truly are concerned about your well-being. It got to be about lunch and I was going to go dig around in the trash can for some thing to eat, but Nooooo! They saved me, on the can it said, ‘For Your Good Health, Can Picking Prohibited!’ So I went to a restaurant instead. And they have little signs everywhere, ‘Please Do Not Eat the Yellow Snow!’ Am I a lucky fellow or what, I thought it was banana flavored, but Noooo! Apparently they are saving it for posterity, and here I would have eaten it up!

I had a moose come and sniff up my butt, talk about intimidating, trying to explain to a 1200 pound moose that not only are you not a female, but oddly enough, not a moose at all, and sniffing up your butt would be, well???  Unproductive.

Man, am I glad to be back in the south where no one gives a damn if you dine out of the garbage cans and if you eat the yellow snow, now that’s funny!! Where if you drive on the lake, you use something called a boat!!! And at least in the south, the deer find you intimidating!  ©

George Henry Nichols