This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Jan. 13, 2011 - Soon the Beacon will begin to publish and to lead discussions about class, that elusive, invisible, definition-defying quality of human behavior that serves not only to unite various parts of the population into compatible organizations but also serves to separate us, to isolate one from the other, often for very silly reasons.
Here is an example: I love it, and I am suspicious of and am perplexed by and even don't particularly like people who profess a loathing for snow. I find this - yes! - this CLASS of people rigid, cut off from one of nature's and life's most amazing and evocative and magical phenomena.
Reasons for snow loathing are anodyne: traffic chaos and driving difficulties, shoveling, mess in the house, ugly piles around after plows leave, etc. None of these is of any consequence except perhaps traffic, and I can't argue with that except to say Take The Bus or play hooky.
Why am I on the snow lover's side of the snow fence resolutely? Here's why. I grew up in the South where a good snow - an accumulation of several inches of the white stuff - was perceived by me to be a miracle, rain transformed into a natural resource not merely utilitarian, like water, but a blessing not so different from there being deposited a fine layer of fine art on my world.
Snow, after all, changes everything around us. Landscapes barren and forbidding at 9 o'clock at night are softened by dawn by a generous snowfall, and as if by sorcery dumpsters and derelict Datsuns are rendered soft and sensuous in the gathering light of day.
So it was on Tuesday morning I awoke early, made sure the snow hadn't turned left at St. Peters and hastened on up to Foley. Thus assured, I tied on my running shoes, which have felt in recent months the pristine floor of a gymnasium rather than the grit and contours of genuine ground beneath them.
Together, the New Balances and I took off for Forest Park and ran steadily for an hour and a half, loving the gentle pelting of fresh snow on my face, grateful that this was a snowfall unblemished by frightful ice, feeling energized by the seeming purity of the snow that stretched forth like an infinite carpet of ermine.
Because of all that, I'm a "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!" sort of guy, along with Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn. They wrote the words and music to that happy number, a song performed by everybody from Frank Sinatra to Bette Midler and Johnny Mathis to Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.
Styne and Cahn worked out "Let It Snow!" in July 1945, during one of the hottest heat waves ever recorded.
"Let It Snow!" fell to earth a month or so after I was born, so perhaps that's why I like it so much. After all, I'm a member of a special and rather refined class of people, those who cheer for snow and hate the weather when, as Cole Porter complained, "It's Too Darn Hot."