Have Minnesotans become weather wimps?

Some people say we've become weak in the face of winter.

That we shy away from the challenge of an unplowed street. That we lack the nerve to venture out when the flakes fly.

And that storms once unfazed Minnesotans, as they were made of sturdy stock and hadn't been turned into timorous hermits by a culture that has elevated safety above all else.

Here's a typical winter forecast from back in the day: 16 inches of snow to fall in six hours. Winds gusting up to 30 miles per hours will make driving difficult, with a visibility of 2 to 3 inches. The reaction: Throw the chains on the Plymouth, let's go bowling!

Here's a current forecast: About a half-inch of snow is predicted for tomorrow between 2 and 3:30 a.m. The reaction: All schools are canceled. Travel is not advised. If you must leave the house, carry an emergency siren, matches, flares, a sandwich and a copy of your will in a waterproof pouch.

This last storm was a big one. School — and a lot of other things — were canceled. And travel, at least in some parts of the state, wasn't advised. But perhaps we're not weather wimps, a charge made by the conspicuously hardy. Perhaps there's something else at work: prudence.

You know, common sense, caution. As in, when the streets are impassable and there's a whiteout, maybe nonessential ventures really are best avoided. You don't have to go to yoga. Downward facing dog is one thing, sideways facing Dodge is another, particularly if it's sliding through an intersection.

Perhaps in ye old times when people seemed better able to drive in snow, such prudence would seem an overreaction, but now? In the middle of the last storm, I saw an impatient driver who tried to pass a snowplow because he had places to be, people to meet, things to do, light poles to hit, airbags to deploy.

People seem to have lost the fine art of getting out of a drift, too. You cannot floor it and hope the tire burns down through the snow until it hits pavement, finds traction and rockets you out like a rock hurled from a trebuchet.

The other night I helped push a car out of a snowbank, and the driver managed to reinsert himself in the drift not once, but three times. It's like freeing a wolf from a trap only to watch him walk right back in it. At some point you realize the wolf would be better off calling AAA.

Maybe we Minnesotans romanticize hardiness at our peril.

The true standard for Minnesota Winter Hardiness would be the people who came here before the invention of central heating and said, "Yeah, I can see going through this every year."

I had a North Dakota pioneer forebearer who got lost in a blizzard and had to spend a night inside a dead cow. He probably got in trouble because he was late for church the next day.

"Menfolk today," his wife fumed. "Lollygagging the night in a nice warm cow instead of finding his way home by following the barbed-wire fence line with his bare hands. I don't know what happened to men to make them weak. Well, wash off the blood and put on your suit, I'll be out in the sleigh warming up the horse."

Good old Great-Grandmother Prudence. They don't make them like that anymore.