It's New England, for heaven's sake!

On the New Jersey Turnpike there are these huge message boards every few miles. Sometimes the warn that you are approaching congestion or an accident and you should be aware and slow down.

On the way back from Baltimore, starting in southern New Jersey, they all said, one after the other in yard tall letters:

WINTER STORM WARNING
     THRU FRIDAY
SNOW AND HIGH WINDS

I'd read the weather forecasts too, but their was a CAPITAL LETTER sense of  terror and looming doom in the messages of the Turnpike Authority. I would have rather known the Rose Bowl score....

I used to think, growing up, that New England Folk were made of sturdier stock than folks like us in the mountains. I imagined everyone had snowshoes and would jack their cows up out of snow drifts twice a day to milk them and everyone had a snow plow and they would plow around the maple trees to tap for syrup in sub-zero weather and nothing  could deter those Hearty dwellers in the states above NYC. That's what I always thought.

I thought you'd ask a New England-er, "cold enough for you?" and they'd reply, "Hell no! And we need more snow!"

Since I've lived here now for over 30 years, I realize how wrong I had been.

Every time some whines to me about 'how cold it is' or 'how slick the roads are' or 'Lordy, Lordy, it's going to snow a foot!' (and lots of people whine about that stuff)...I just say, "It's New England for heaven's sake, get over it...."

Get a grip, New England. This isn't the Bahamas and we live here in order to be 'sterner stuff' than those warm weather sissies....