by Sandy » Wed Feb 02, 2011 2:07 pm
I never really "got" Groundhog day, growing up in Arizona and having lived in the southern half of the US for most of my life, where winter is a matter of just a few days, maybe a few frosty mornings and some dustings of snow every now and then. Feb. 2 is meaningless when the end of winter is just a calendar date and you can wear shorts and short sleeves long before mid-March. Now, I live about an hour's drive from Gobbler's Knob in Punxsutawney, and I can almost hear "hear ye, hear ye." We've had six to eight inches of snow on the ground continuously since Dec. 1, except for a couple of days, the snow pile in the front yard where I've shoveled the driveway a dozen times is probably three feet high, and we've had four days during that time when the daytime high exceeded 32.
I get it now.