ABC WORLD NEWS TONIGHT INTERVIEW ON TITANIC

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Cabin Fever

I get it why Hemingway lived in Key West and then Cuba. I mean I really get it watching the snow swirling outside my window in the middle of April. Cabin Fever. This is when it is the worse. You have done your time. You have suffered through the sub zero days and the snow and you have trudged through gale force bone cracking wind and now it is April and you should be rewarded for living in the Midwest and going through weeks without sunshine and days so dark and cold you feel like slitting your wrist. But NOOOOO. It's snowing and its raining and the sun wont be back for a week. Cabin fever hits you like a dark night.

The real thing that gets you is going to Florida. You come back and your first question off the plane is: How stupid am I? And you answer it quickly. REALLY STUPID. Why would you live in a place where basically people spend seven to eight months indoors and then run outside like hysterical lepers at the first sign of sun only to get rained on or snowed on or blown away in a tornado. In Florida you get up and go for a run and sit on the beach and yeah it's full of retired people and everyone is transplants and the alligators and swamps are a little weird, but WHO CARES! It's beautiful man and you are not stuck in doors.

And yeah when you get older you come to realize that the Midwest is where all the coalminers live. People work in the Midwest. And then they work some more. And then they work some more. Then they get old and die. GREAT. It's not as bad as all that but it's close. Just ride the Metra in the dead of winter with all the commuters and it looks like something out Russia with everyone trudging toward the Gulag. And then you to this place where it is sunny every day. Nobody seems to work. Cars don't rust. You wear shorts and eat seafood. And the ocean is there just for you.

But that is not where you live. You live in the Chicago land area. Everyone does work including you. And you cannot figure out how to escape. So you wait. You wait with everyone else. You wait for the sun and grit it out until...June, maybe July...August?

www.billhazelgrove.com

Rocket Man will blast off in July









Books by William Hazelgrove