As anyone knows who has even a nodding acquaintance with me and this column, I love Pinehurst. In my opinion, Marilyn and I should have moved here years before we did.

To be sure, there are some things we miss from our former life in Pennsylvania. We had a nice home and some good friends there.

What I don’t miss is something I hesitate to bring up for fear of jinxing us all. It’s a four-letter word that to me means blood, toil, tears, and sweat. It means inconvenience, danger, frustration, and a backache. From the time I was old enough to drive a car, I hated it. Snow.

Snow can be a very difficult thing to deal with. Other weather annoyances God lays on us, like thunderstorms, are here and gone, but not snow. Snow hangs around for a while, reminding us that God likes a joke as much as anybody. Once snow arrives, it’s up to us as good citizens to get rid of it, or at least move it to another place where it becomes someone else’s problem.

I’m aware, as I write this in early December, with birds chirping, golfers going by my living room window, and neighbors taking walks in shirtsleeves, that this column may not be a good idea. It’s like inviting the weatherman to dump the white stuff on us.

If that happens, it’s all my fault and I’m sorry, but I want to help myself remember what it was like up north, and how much more enjoyable life is here in the wintertime.

I’ll give you just one illustration of why I don’t like snow. Clearing my driveway in Pennsylvania after a snowstorm was never easy. As soon as I got all of the snow shoveled off to the side and out into the street, the township truck would come along and plow it back into a big pile at the end of my driveway so I couldn’t get out. This cycle of my shoveling out, and their plowing me back in, would continue until God had enough fun and sent out the sun to end it all.

Then a neighbor down the street got himself a snow blower. When he was transferred to Atlanta, I offered to buy it, but he said he was taking it with him as a status symbol. No kidding. So I got my own.

The next time it snowed, I got out my new machine and was happily blowing out my driveway, when I felt someone watching me. It was the guy next door, who was clearing his driveway with a shovel. Not only was my blowing snow falling on his driveway, it was also falling all over him, and he looked like Sir Edmund Hillary wondering if he should try for the summit or turn back.

I apologized and turned my blower the other way, which was the direction from which the wind was coming. I realized right away that I was blowing snow back into my own face. I took the only course left open to me and began blowing the snow into the street, but the township truck came along and plowed it right back at me. I had to finish clearing the driveway with a shovel, and I detected a little smirk on my neighbor’s face when he saw me laboring away.

Besides the driveway problem, there are lots of other reasons to dislike snow unless, of course, you’re into winter sports. ( Marilyn and I are not.) I also never liked driving in snow, clearing a run for the dog, putting on all that cold weather gear, and most of all, not being able to play golf.

Excuse me, but I have to go now. It’s raining, and if it gets very much colder, I’m leaving town. It could snow, and I don’t want to face all the people who will blame it on me.