THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT  
              Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Wednesday, March 8, 1995               TAG: 9503080501
SECTION: LOCAL                    PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: GUY FRIDDELL
                                             LENGTH: Medium:   61 lines

SINGING BIRDS, BURSTING BULBS, ALL SIGNAL THAT SPRING IS NEAR

There is going to be a spring, after all.

Proof aplenty Tuesday.

Some of us had begun to doubt it.

Just plain tired of the cold, even mild as it is around here.

So Tuesday morning, early, on the field's far edge, a remnant of Confederate gray fog hung 3 feet above the ground, so pronounced that the Labrador retriever noticed it and charged. The fog writhed, began to dissipate. Routed by a Lab.

A mockingbird surfaced Sunday from a hedge. Tuesday there was a chorus - no, more of a barbershop quartet - of birds tuning up, noodling around, nothing like nature's swelling affirmation in two weeks.

In late February, an outbreak of robins occurred, hundreds of 'em standing around, portentous, on lawns. People reckoned what it meant. Called in here, excited, to report the first robins of spring.

Most of 'em wintered hereabouts in woods and swamps and just came out in force to see if the first robins had come up from the south. I tell you, it was no place to be a worm.

On the fringe of a thin, straggly thicket I came upon nine daffodils, spindly, but definitely daffodils. Unless they were jonquils.

The brave yellow fellows had come up on their own. Without any encouragement, hardy volunteers.

Not once, when I was in the third grade, did I find the first daffodil to take to school to beautiful Miss Eubanks, who'd put it on her desk and say, ``Now, class, let's see who can drew the best daffodil.''

Now here were nine of 'em and no Miss Eubanks.

And not once, from the the first through the third grade, did Guy Friddell draw a daffodil acceptable for hanging above the blackboard for PTA night.

Suddenly it occurs to me to wonder how in the name of Luther Burbank could Miss Eubanks decide what set apart one daffodil from another, in the field or on the board.

But she did.

Just draw what you please and don't disturb the rest of the class, she said to me.

So in my horsehead tablet, I'd draw a scene of airplanes dog-fighting in the sky, as they had done in the First World War, zooming around dropping bombs on the ground or shooting each other down, Eddie Rickenbacker and the Red Baron.

Now and then Miss Eubanks, passing down the aisle, would glance over my shoulder and go on.

Death rays were just coming into vogue in pulp magazines. One day I drew a landscape of rays interlacing high above the buildings, a sort of umbrella of them, so that when the enemy airplanes dove at the city and opened their bays, the bombs bounced off the rays and exploded harmlessly.

Star Wars!

Unbeknownst to anybody, even to myself, I had produced a Strategic Defense Initiative!

Good thing beautiful Miss Eubanks wasn't a Russian spy, that's all I've got to say. by CNB