Groundhog Day

Today marks another of those days in which we can safely indulge ourselves in the absurd. People around the country get interested in the antics of some people in a town with an unpronounceable name in Pennsylvania, who dress themselves up in black top hats and frock coats, if I'm remembering correctly, so that they look the same as I imagine the elders togged themselves out in colonial Salem, when they consigned to flames highly unfortunate women accused of witchcraft.

Under the fond gaze of TV cameras, these guys in 21st Century PA gather around the burrow of a groundhog -- or woodchuck, depending on where you live -- and wait to see if he will come out and cast a shadow. Whether he does or not is supposed to forecast whether or not we will have six more weeks of winter. I can never remember exactly how that goes, maybe because six weeks later the news is never full of gratitude or indignation about the truth of that forecast.

It's sunny here today, but because it's also cold I don't expect the Virginia groundhogs, a practical bunch, to make any showing at all, especially if they're not too drowsy to detect the presence of throngs of noisy, expectant observers waiting just outside.

This observance is so popular that, as happens so often in these often jealous United States of America, such as the earliest dates of primary elections, many other places around the rest of the country have jumped into the act and are engaging in the same activity, so draining out of the event any tiny speck of significance that it may ever have had.

But the occasion has its uses, because it always allows me to remember that the day also marks the birth of L., a longtime friend and one of my best friends.

I rarely see him because he lives far off in another part of Virginia, a beautiful area close to the Atlantic picturesquely called the Northern Neck. There he lives where previous owners operated a horticultural nursery, so that now he can enjoy the sight of crepe myrtle shrubs that are as tall as three-story buildings.

L. and his wife M. keep inviting us to visit them again, but despite the fact that they are in the same state, my extreme reluctance even to set foot on my road has caused me to drop in there only once. They are well off, and L. has a boat that he can board directly from his lawn, because their land fronts on what the Northern Neckers call a "creek," though to me it looks suspiciously like a full-fledged bay, just as the natives in my county will give the name of "lake" to what has all the appearance of being only a pond, maybe a biggish pond but a mere pond nevertheless.

I'm impressed by L's crepe myrtles but not especially by his boat. I appreciate boats only when I would like to go somewhere in them, such as to Japan, and I have exactly the same attitude toward airplanes. The reason is that if the craft breaks down you can't get out and walk.

Every year, because the groundhog watching reminds me that it is L's birthday, I think it a good idea to call L. and wish him well, but somehow I never get around to it. I guess that is because my aversion to taking joyrides in boats, planes, and even cars extends to talking on the telephone. But talking to L. is a good reason, and I'm waiting with interest to see if I will at last get it together this year.