I got in on the tail end of the first Polar Vortex that gripped Minnesota a couple of weeks ago when I went home for my mother’s 85th birthday celebration.

My trip ended with a three-hour wait in the plane at the Fargo, N.D., airport as they defrosted frozen water lines in the aircraft. It was 22 below that morning. That’s cold even by Minnesota standards, since the wind chill put it at about minus 35.

Waiting endlessly on the tarmac is probably what I get for chuckling to myself when the arctic blast first hit my home state. The Fargo Forum had a story about the frozen food and dairy manager at the Hornbacher’s grocery story in Fargo who was taking refuge in his freezer because it was actually warmer than the minus-40 wind chill outside. You just can’t make this stuff up.

Going south for the winter or at least for a decent winter break was unheard of when I was growing up in northern Minnesota. There was no way all those dairy farmers could leave their cows or their water lines for that long. But times have changed. The neighborhood dairies are long gone, replaced by a few big corporate-sized dairy farms that run like well-oiled machines with hired workers.

These days hordes of Minnesotans flee for balmy climates this time of year, typically to Mexico or Hawaii. And they’re taking precautions to protect their pasty white Nordic skin.

Last year while I waiting in the local beauty shop while Mom got her hair done, Syver Olsgaard (his name has been changed slightly to protect me from obvious backlash!) waltzed into the shop and told the lady in charge he was there for his first tanning session. This scene had all the makings of a Garrison Keillor story on “Prairie Home Companion.”

“Oh, ya, I’m going to Cabo San Lucas next month and they told me I better get a little color, else I’ll burn like a lobster,” he told the clerk, his Minnesotan twang as clear as a bell. “I don’t know nothing ’bout these tanning beds so you better show me the ropes.”

Again, I chuckled to myself. A man in his early 60s tanning in my hometown. It was hilarious. I shrugged it off as an isolated incident, until two weeks ago when my brother dropped me and Mom off at Herberger’s for some birthday shopping.

“I’ll have just enough time to get my tanning session in,” Rodney told us. He and his wife are headed to Mexico for their annual sojourn next week.

“What?” I gasped. “You, too?”

“Oh, sure, all of us guys are doing it,” he confided. “Do you know how we’d burn if we didn’t get some color before we go?”

Apparently these flocks of snowbirds aren’t willing to sit around on beaches with their floppy hats, Hawaiian shirts and SPF 80 sunscreen, even if they know it would be healthier for their fair skin if they did. If they’re going to Mexico, they’re darn well going to soak up the sun and that means lying on the beach with exposed body parts.

Who can blame them, though. If I were still living back in that frozen tundra I’d probably want to bask in the southern sun, too, and fry my fish-belly-white skin, if only for a few days.

Life is short, but those winters are oh, so long.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at [email protected].