David McCoy is taking a break. This column originally ran Feb. 12, 2010.

It’s freezing cold down here in Dixie! Listen, I fully expect the South to be humid and hot, balmy and breezy, and stifling and sticky, but nowhere did I sign up for frigid and frozen.

We Southerners will tolerate an occasional ice storm or that rare centimeter or two of snow, but weather like we have had for the past few months is nuts. The only solution to this craziness is to learn to control the weather ourselves.

We try to control the economy, our destiny, and our kids, why can’t we take on the weather? Would it be easier to control a hail storm or a teenage daughter? Yeah, I thought you’d see it my way.

Imagine it’s July 4th and you’re down on Peachtree Street watching a parade. You’re sweltering and everyone around you is grumpy and melting in the heat. What if someone could dial up an ice storm to cool things off? Wouldn’t that be a great idea? Well, until some scientist figures out the knobs on the weather system, we’ll never know.

Lots of smart folks have told us it’s ludicrous to try to control the weather. Of course, other smart folks told us stocks only go up, deflation is impossible, and passbook savings accounts paying 5.25 percent interest are pathetic investments — so much for smart folks.

I do know this: Weather control is a powerful weapon, and if we ever do figure it out, the government will ruin it for everyone. They’ll take control of the knobs and start their normal political tricks.

Can’t you just envision a governmental policy to redistribute weather like they try to redistribute income? Can’t you just see some cranky old liberal senator giving 10 of your state’s best spring days to "the unfortunate and cold" in North Dakota?

In my view, it’s this deep fear of governmental interference that has stifled weather-control experiments. I was getting pretty good at making little chunks of crescent-shaped ice this summer, but I had to halt my experiments when the fridge finally died. That’s OK by me. It would have been fun to crack the weather code, but I had no desire to become the "Karl Marx of bad weather socialism."

Besides, if you even mention "weather-control machine" to the patent office, they’ll put you on one of those lists. Believe me; I don’t want to be on any government list when Congress learns the recipe for hail.

?

David McCoy, a notorious storyteller and proud Yellow Jacket, lives in Covington. He can be reached at davmccoy@bellsouth.net.