Thirty days hath September
April, June and November;
All the rest have 31, except February, which is endless.
That's how Charley McDowell generally started his annual Times-Dispatch columns on February, which, the record shows, was not his favorite month. It ranked 12th.
He likened February to the flu, "Silas Marner" and the War of the Austrian Succession. He described it as the "weariest and dreariest, the darkest and dankest, the coldest and bleakest month of all." No telling how he would have felt had February had as many days as a grown-up month like, say, January.
Those who disagreed with his assessment cited the February birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, along with Valentine's Day, as evidence of the month's value. He found that a thin argument.
He also noted those who seemed to take the greatest offense to his yearly disparaging discourse on February were those born in February. That number would include me, though I never minded what he wrote. It's hard to dispute the truth when everybody and his Aunt Gertrude can see it.
It was suggested that perhaps as a tribute to Charley, who died last November after a long career in which he deservedly was the most well-known face and voice of The Times-Dispatch's news pages, I might reprise his scrutiny of February.
No way I can top Charley, but I figured I might try a different approach. What if I were to take an optimistic view of February, listing its many fine qualities and attributes?
OK, here goes.
I'm thinking.
Still thinking.
Raw squid on a stick is worse.
I know, that's not a month.
How about this: It's short.
Guess that's something of an indictment when the most commendable feature a month has to offer is its brevity, and even that's deemed endless by many.
However, not everyone has stood idly by as February sinks ever lower in public esteem. I've not been able to confirm this with three reliable sources (or even one, for that matter), but I've heard reports of a somewhat clandestine lobbying effort to rehabilitate February's image. The Society for the Preservation and Onward Optimization of February (SPOOF) decided several years ago that what February really needed was a public relations makeover. How better to achieve that than with a signature event.
The group tried enticing Major League Baseball's World Series — "the Fall Classic," if you recall — but February is a tough month for baseball outside of Florida and Arizona. Then it tried persuading college athletic directors to move up their basketball schedules so "March Madness" could become "February Foolishness," but that didn't have quite the same ring, and nothing came of it. Christmas was pretty well set in December, and the Fourth of July, well, SPOOF didn't even bother.
But the group struck gold with the biggest prize of all: the Super Bowl. You may have noticed that since Charley retired in 1998 and stopped calling attention to the dangers of February, the National Football League has quietly slipped the annual game from late January to early February. SPOOF reportedly paid billions. It seemed to be money well-spent.
Except …
Did you notice what happened in the build-up to last week's Super Bowl in Texas? Ice and snow. Welcome to February.
Charley would have seen that coming.
wlohmann@timesdispatch.com
(804) 649-6639
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