Steve Moseley

I hope 2025 is off to a smashing start for you and yours. Really, I do.

I, on the other hand, am a ‘wait and see’ kinda guy. I look ahead with skepticism and low expectations. That way if anything good does happen, say a high school kid barrels in front of me through a heavy, hydraulic gym door, then stops two seconds to smile in acknowledgment of my existence on earth, hold it so it doesn’t slam on my face as I stand defenseless with both hands full of camera gear, I’ll be thrilled. This is how I keep the bar low.

But not the other day. No siree. At a wrestling invite the kid bull-rushed me at the door, wedged in front and hit the entrance like a drone strike, then went on his self-absorbed way … letting the mechanical door crunch me but good.

Many times, sad to say, people do what you expect. Other times, they surprise and delight.

By contrast, I made a quick Saturday trip to Ace Hardware. I had a small problem and went to see if my Helpful Hardware Lady worked weekends. She was faithfully on duty. We are blessed in my town with a lively woman possessed of a genuine smile at our Ace Hardware who is just the best. However many times I come to her with a pint-sized problem is how many times she sends me home with a smile and a solution; typically for a piddling sale of a few bucks.

The high school kid raised by wolves could take endless lessons from this master of people skills. If only he were mature enough to observe.

Which will it be this year? Heaping helpings of both sides of the human behavior coin inevitably await, just like it was in each of the 7.5 decades that preceded this latest chapter.

One hindrance to my unbridled, break dancing, ball dropping joy in the bloom of a new year is that it’s so dang miserable, freezing cold and bleak.

I covet a life in New Mexico. My late kid brother Brad bragged Christmas Day for his family in Carlsbad was (1) hang a few ornaments on the front yard palm tree, (2) hork down mass quantities at dinner and (3) repair to the golf course, there to battle, in shorts and tees, post-feast lethargy over 18 emerald-hued, sun-drenched holes.

Nebraska? Not a chance.

But wait, there’s more!

Your creaking scribe has also been SAD for 30 years running, though Good Wife Norma would suggest 40 or more. SAD as in Seasonal Affective Disorder, a mental condition that does not play kindly with leafless branches, mind-numbing gray skies and the brown, brown, everywhere brown hues of winter hereabouts.

You fortunate Wyoming folks have mountains and forests. You have bighorn sheep on the winter range, downhill skiing and, for hard-core wackos, ice climbing. Winter delivers a cornucopia of winter delight right to your door.

Not so in the eastern environs of Nebraska where I ride it out in my recliner under an afghan, fake mirrored fireplace/space heater blasting for all it’s worth.

Sledding is ‘meh’ at best. A hump of dirt in a city park or perhaps a snow-packed irrigation canal bank must suffice.

Skinny skiing? Not here. Especially because, in the teeth of global warming, modern annual snowfall ranges between iffy and nil.

On the rare occasion we do get snow, it’s so deep and violent you couldn’t get out of the neighborhood for days anyway.

How bad can it be?

When our kids were little, we were buried by a blizzard of a couple feet delivered by howling wind. Earlier that fall I purchased an old, beater work car for cheap from a guy in jail who needed bail money. Tom, the neighbor and affable JP across the street, brokered the transaction. The thing ran a few weeks, predictably croaked and was parked, dead as a hammer, alongside the yard awaiting a spring trip to the salvage yard.

The three kids, as kids will do, wailed to go sledding in this new, wonderful, white, fluffy paradise. My explanation that we were snowed in tight fell on itty-bitty deaf ears.

So, I did the best I could.

The four of us buried the old junker in packed snow a couple feet deep, carved a sled run in front of it curving out into the back yard, then spritzed the whole works just before sunset.

Morning dawned on an adventure all three, now in their 40s and 50s, still smile about and speak of fondly.

I leaned a shortish, wooden step ladder against the driver’s door and in the spirit of Olympic bobsledders, they piloted slick, hard plastic sleds off the roof, down the hood, over the grill and shot way out in the yard to exhaustion. You never saw such red cheeks and bright eyes or heard so much shrieking and giggling.

This was long, long ago when their energy and mine were equally infinite.

Now age 75, when I recall that winter adventure and so many others, I wonder if the present aversion to the frozen season may rest, most of all, at the feet of creaky bones, poor circulation, impatience and sloth.

This, I cannot deny.