Caveat Emptor

Of course, the majority of alumni don't live here. Other Eden, demi-paradise though it is, there are reasons not to. It snows a lot, you know? And if it doesn't, you wish it had, because 40° below without snow is a lot colder than 40° below with snow. On the other, other hand, it never quite snows you in good and proper, so you can throw up your hands and settle down to the romantic task of camping out in the house for a few days: No, it's always just possible to dig yourself and your gallant steed out in time to slip, slide, and slither to work, only a few minutes late and in plenty of time to discover that the office is closed because of road conditions.

Folks have laughed for years at the old Yankee joke about not being able to get there from here. It's a joking matter from July to October only. The rest of the year it's the simple truth. If the name of the airline connecting Lebanon to the rest of the world doesn't change between the time you buy your ticket and the time the plane leaves, the weather will, several times; and the prospect of chewing fingernails for hours in some bleak airport lounge while connecting flights fall like dominoes puts most of us off plane travel in the winter. Striking out in the car is equally daunting, attempted with the heart in the mouth, "Stay off the brakes!" pounding in the brain, and never enough windshield wash.

There is a train, of course. We have a train that comes and goes each day. It comes at 3:45 a.m. and goes at 11:45 p.m., and statistically it has a more than sporting chance of staying on the tracks (not, however, much chance of arriving anywhere on time: let us be realistic). All in all, the bus is the best bet. If you aren't overly dismayed by the possibility of returning to an ice-skating rink in the living room, you can happily go by bus to Boston or New York, where they know how to deal with snow: give up.

Here we spend our lives trying to outwit it. We pay exhorbitant taxes to finance mammoth road equipment to salt the roads so our cars can rust out as rapidly and efficiently as possible. We muck up our car trunks with leaky containers of sand, ashes, kitty litter, windshield wash, and drygas, not to mention jumper cables, snow shovels, burlap sacks, ice scrapers, tire chains, tow chains, comealongs, and snarled rope. In other places, kids build houses in trees; here grownups build houses for trees. Where else does snowsuit dementia afflict such a high percentage of parents? In what other area of the country would you seriously consider putting the kids' sandbox in the basement?

Don't get the wrong idea. It doesn't always snow. We have a mud season, too. In fact, for sheer tragi-comic drama, it's hard to beat our most humbling initiation rite: combat with a mired automobile.

Usually we go back to snow for a bit after mud season, but we can pretty much guarantee you nary a flake from July right the way through to October. That's a fair stretch, you know. Time to grow a whole mess of green tomatoes. Time to cut, haul, split, and stack enough wood to keep you alive until the next cutting, hauling, splitting, and stacking season. Time to take the snow tires off and put them back on again (not, however, time to get them out of the trunk).

The one thing you can't fault about the place is foliage season. All that glorious color! It would be nice, though, if you could tell from one year to the next when it was going to happen, so that you weren't forever explaining to visitors how it had already peaked or wasn't going to just yet. Still, those of us who live here get to see it whenever it comes. Assuming we remember to look up from the stacking.