Mr. Sunshine!

Wow! What a winter! As I made my rounds on Friday and thought about this week’s column, I just could not get away from the fact that it was warm and that after tolerating some of the coldest weather I can remember, all of a sudden I was back in shirt sleeves or just a vest. I am in my ninth year as a legislator and I do not remember ever closing the Capitol during session for a weather event. Even on the sunny shores down here on Oklahoma’s southern coast, we had below zero temps last week and of course, when you are battling tough weather like we have had in the last month, it reminds you of all the tough winters in years past.

I am old enough to remember the blizzard of 1968. I was only seven but I remember huge amounts of snow. In those days we didn’t have Gortex but wore Wonderbread sacks over our feet before we stepped into our snow boots. I remember the winter of ’83-’84 when I was a herdsman for a purebred cattle outfit and I really remember the winter of ’87-’88 when I was losing my own money trying to carry a set of yearlings through an extremely brutal winter. This year, it did not seem to last quite as long and maybe I am older, but it did seem just as brutal. There were lots of cattle lost in these last two storms many of which were yearlings that tried to walk across frozen ponds. I have never in Oklahoma heard of temperatures as low as they had up in Nowata and in the Osage country where those folks dealt with around 30 below zero. I have not heard any horror stories but I know there will be some because a lot of those Osage ranches were already putting cattle together to stock their summer range. It is kinda bad when 25 degrees feels good. But, I think we have made it and I have never seen a more welcomed sign than Ole Mr. Sunshine, as my girls used to call it when they were little, warming up this old frozen tundra. It was almost comical as I drove to Frederick last Friday, to see cattle all over the country just laying flat on their sides stretched out and soaking up the warmth like bovine solar panels. For two or three weeks, they were humped up with snow on their backs eating everything they could just to stay warm.

Last week was the beginning of session and it seemed like we just got going before the weather shut us down. I am afraid it is going to be a little like snow days for our schools. There is going to be a squaring of the account because we had a ton of work in front of us and I just hope it did not get us too far behind. Whether or not it takes a couple of extra days to get finished or not, the sunshine makes it much more tolerable. So, get out and enjoy it! I will be enjoying it from my desk inside the mother ship but I have been here long enough to get a window so hello, Mr. Sunshine!

If you would like to contact me while I am at the capitol, please do not hesitate to send an email to donarmes@house.gov or call me at 1-800-522-8502.

And here’s a little something to think about as you go down the road:

“If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome”. ~Anne Bradstreet