Starbucks snows Monkey in North Miami

It really did snow in 1977 but this was last week in downtown North Miami at the plaza in front of the art museum. Starbucks opened a new coffee shop there, and they trucked in a load of snow, actually I suppose it's finely chipped ice, and had a machine on the roof spraying a gentle cascade of artificial snow down over everything.

Monkey spent most of his life carefully packed away by my mother. I suppose he'd played in the snow with me when I was a toddler 60 odd years ago but in 1977 I didn't even know that he still existed. That January morning my wife Stephanie excitedly woke me up before it was properly light out. "It's SNOWING! Hurry! Get up! Come see it!" she shouted.

I'm not much of a morning person but I dragged myself out of the bed, put on a robe, and followed her to the front door. I should have grabbed a camera! A light mist of snow flakes was drifting down from the grey sky. The paved street and sidewalk had enough stored heat so it melted on contact but the blades of grass had cooled enough in the night air so a light dusting of white graced the lawn and the trees. I poured a cup of coffee, lit a cigarette, loaded a camera, and went back to the door. Perhaps only fifteen minutes had gone by but the sun had peeked through the clouds, the breeze had warmed up a bit, and there wasn't a spec of white left to see. It was gone!

Anyway, I took Monkey to the Starbucks grand opening and he got to play in the snow while we had our morning coffee. We both had a great time!

I recently became aware that some other bloggers post a link to my blog on their blogs so it's only fair to reciprocate. From time to time I'll be posting a link here on The Price Of Silver. Today's link often has some interesting things but a warning! It's written like a Middle School alternative newspaper, which should be obvious from the name of the web site. Still, it's usually worth a gander. http://www.photopoo.com/ Frank will be thrilled!