"I remember more than once watching shivering ballplayers attempting to play ball as snow fell on Opening Day," Roz Warren writes. (Facebook photo)
Philadelphia's mid-morning temperature Saturday is 14 degrees, and ex-Detroiter Roz Warren thinks her suburban neighbors should stop "kvetching about the cold," as she puts it at a radio station's site.
You Philadelphians know nothing about cold. We transplanted Michiganders laugh at your idea of bad weather. . . .
I grew up in Detroit, where the snow hit the ground in early November and stayed there through April. Snowfall wasn't remarkable; it was a given.
I was a Detroit Tigers fan, and I remember more than once watching shivering ball players attempting to play ball as snow fell on Opening Day.
Warren, a freelance writer, tells readers at a Newsworks blog run by FM station WHYY about a lifelong familiarity with single-digit temperatures.
Every morning we waited on the corner for the school bus, our breath visible in the icy air, so bundled up we looked like a gathering of mini Michelin men, in bulky jackets, snow pants, thermal socks, sturdy boots, scarves, face masks, hats and, of course, mittens. . . .
We didn't dress this way to go out and play in the snow for hours. We had to dress this way to endure 10 minutes of standing around.
In Philly, she notes, "only little kids wear snow pants, and I don't own a single pair of mittens."
