Barry Crimmins - Never Shake Hands with a War Criminal

Table of Contents

Dedicated to Howard Zinn. Many people make history; few people change it.

An angry audience member asked, If you dont love this country, why dont you get out?

I replied, Because I dont want to be victimized by its foreign policy.

Even in death, Nixon is like herpeseach time you think hes gone, he flares up again.

Too many Americans think wrestling is real and war is fake.

Im a proponent of gun control. For those of you in the National Rifle Association, proponent means Im in favor of gun control.

Theres a nickels worth of difference between Democrats and Republicans. If you put a nickel on the table, a Democrat will steal it from you ... and a Republican will kill you for it.

Mark Twain promised that thered be no weather in his novel The American Claimant. In a hilarious disclaimer he made a good point about how literature is rife with needless descriptions of meteorological circumstances. Anyone who has read the book knows that Mr. Clemens shattered his pledge and used weather as the central issue at the storys conclusion.

Old Sam cant be blamed. The elements are hard to avoid, particularly in my hometown of Skaneateles, New York, located on the northern tip of the lake of the same name. It buckles under the same snowbelt that Syracuse has immortalized. Just to the north, Lake Ontario runs almost perfectly east-west on the border with Canada, ideally situated to create lake-effect snow. The other Great Lakes lie at more of an angle. Thats why the least of the Greats creates the most consistently tyrannical winters: Its paralleling of the northern boundary provides a short commute for icy gales that mix with lake moisture to become more snow than most of you will ever see. And this is before Christmas.

It isnt until the New Year that winter truly begins to weed out the weak. Alberta Clippers and lake-effect blizzards are sensational, but its the relentlessness of the most miserable of seasons that breaks people. Marriages dissolve, friendships collapse, businesses fail. Many just sit in their homes and drink until it becomes possible to open the door again. In years when the snowfall reaches fifteen feet, cirrhosis may set in before that happens.

As if the lake-effects dumpings werent sufficient, Skaneateles is close enough to the Atlantic Ocean to catch the brunt of many noreasters. Most years there will be a terrible week when two lake-provoked blizzards bracket a noreaster. Some years it will snow every day for several weeks. Most years the snow starts early and leaves late. Ive seen serious snow on Memorial Day weekend and on several Halloweens, where the only believable costume was that of the Michelin Man. In January even mercury heads south to huddle in the little ball at the bottom of the thermometer. At this point winter becomes sarcastic. When it warms up, it snows. Temperatures upward of twenty degrees feel like a balmy spring day.

Worse than the arctic temps and mountains of precipitation is the pathological lack of sunshine. Those allergic to sunlight are sent to live in Central New York, a place where photo-toxicity will keep an individual housebound for only a few weeks a year. One-hundred plus inches of annual snowfall is tough, but its the dreariness that really gets to you. The CNY skies turn battle-ship gray in late October and rarely appear otherwise until the middle of April.

Cynicism peaks in February, when it feels as if it has been winter since you were a small child. People begin to fearfully discuss 1816, the year summer never came. It actually did come, but sporadic frosts that were the long-term result of the 1815 eruption of the Tambora volcano, east of Java but well west of Rochester, ruined crops throughout the northeast. Atmospheric ash reduced sunlight, and it never really warmed up that year. Because there is a precedent, a latter-day endless winter becomes one of the few possibilities that seem believable during January here in the Finger Lakes. Spending so much time cooped up and bummed out leads one down the contrarian path. This is understandable, since its one of the few passages that do not require shoveling three times a day. So people from Central New York spend a lot of time carefully examining thingsfor flaws. When I was growing up, the three Syracuse TV stations offered a very narrow amount of programming. We saw most of it again and again. We always spotted the newscaster with the toupee, the high-tension wires in tales of the Old West, and the sportscasters who said ridiculous things like, Syracuse has a foot, maybe twelve inches to go for a first down.

These things were absurd, and when we focused on them and improvised around them, we laughed. While laughing, we forgot that there were only three and a half months until spring. And that if we could see the sun, it would still set at about 3:00 PM. The local accent, with its defeated and flattened tone, is also weather related. It contributes mightily to the general malaise. Its hard to say, a hundred and ninety-three inches of snow crisply. The phrase must be dragged out, just like winter. A hunnnerdaaanndnyyyyndeeeetreee innnnchaaazzz aaaaa snoooohhhh. Wait, now its a hunnnerdaaanndnyyyyndeeeefourrrr innnnchaaazzz aaaaa snoooohhhh.

Teachers at Skaneateles Central School fought the elements just to reach classrooms full of third graders capable of scoffing, Yeah, sure with sardonic eloquence. SCS students can take a word like probably and turn it into a weapon of mass farcification. Oh yeah, were praaaahblee gonna play owtside taaaday. I was one of those third graders. And so weather has made me what I am todaywhich is to say, skeptical. And just a tad sarcastic.