THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 2, 1997 TAG: 9702020120
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: 49 lines
Two things make even a moderately cold winter bearable for us hereabouts, it occurred to me under the combed cotton fleecing Saturday's mild blue skies.
The first is weather readings from frigid precincts elsewhere in America, where temperatures skid as far below zero there as they hover above it here.
Even shivering when the wind knifes through a jacket, one feels abashed at the thought of what people are enduring in the far north and the remote upper Midwest, with snow drifts dwarfing houses.
How the deuce did the plains Indians of the Dakotas survive when buffalo froze? To think about it makes you shiver.
What possesses human beings to stay in cruel climes more fit for polar bears, one wonders. Just a gritty instinct to tough it out, I guess.
At the end, they'll be better set to prevail when the Ice Age sets in.
Feeling sorry for the snowbound towns, one tends to pull for their football teams come Super Bowl time. That, usually, is the factor determining my support of a team, unless, of course, John Elway is involved.
Before I die or Elway retires, I'd like to see his Denver Broncos win at least one Super Bowl.
Thrice he's taken them there, only to be turned back at the finale.
This year seemed to be all the way Elway, but the Jacksonville Jaguars, in just their second year as an expansion team, eked out a victory over the Broncos, to my regret.
When Denver scored an early touchdown, the place-kicker failed to boot the extra point, and the TV camera panned to Elway's pained grimace.
At that sight, the color commentator marveled, ``He wants it ALL!''
``OF COURSE HE WANTS IT ALL, YOU UTTER FOOL!'' I bellowed at the TV screen.
``HE KNOWS THE JEALOUS GODS ARE PULLING FOR THE JAGS. TO JOHN ELWAY EVERY POINT IS CRUCIAL, YOU JACK!''
In the game's waning seconds, straining to drive the Broncos toward one more miraculous finish, Elway's flailing arm threw pass after pass. But time ran out.
As time does when the gods deem mortals to be on the point of over-reaching on their Olympus.
No team from Florida ought ever be allowed to win a Super Bowl.
In last week's Bowl my sympathy was with the Green Bay Packers. But then while winter seldom touches in New England the depths it reaches in Green Bay, the Patriots were the lesser of the two in talent. So there were two underdogs. The Packers won. Just as well.
As to the second reason our winters are more easily borne, my time has run out, as it did for Elway. But we will be back.