My face is red. My knuckles are raw because I forgot the gloves again. The ink in my pen is frozen and the tip tears right through notebook paper. Cussing, I flip to the next page and a chill wind rips the whole thing out of my hands.

The tops of my ears sting. Some form of blowing precipitation stabs my eyeball. It’s a horrid night for news collection, but that’s not the worst of it. The worst of it is the wet feet. Man, if I ever snap and run amok screaming, it will have something to do with wet feet.

I know what you’re thinking. I’ve whined about winter incessantly since some fool gave me this space in the newspaper. It’s Maine, you say. Love it or leave it. If I can’t take the cold, I should move down south and contend with humidity and winged horrors.

Ah, go dry your feet.

You have to admit, this can be a dismal place this time of year. When your business is downtown mischief, miserable weather is not an ally. The sight of vacant streets is disheartening. Criminals are like the rest of us, you know. They shiver from chills, lean into icy winds and hustle from place to place. It’s no time to pillage and cavort when hail is blowing down your back and slushy stuff gets in your shoes.

When winter weather turns mean, the baddest of the bad go scurrying for cover. I take what I can get.

Just the other night, I braved wind, rain and slush underfoot to check out an angry huddle of hoodlums on a street corner. There was a loud exchange of words. Hands flew into the air to emphasize strong points. One man jabbed a finger at another as the confrontation heated up.

I sloshed through wet snow. I crept closer with shrieking wind masking my movements. I cocked an ear toward the combatants to hear what conflict would soon lead to an all-out brawl. A drug deal gone bad? A quarrel over a woman?

Ha! What, in this nastiness? No, these irate men were arguing bitterly over the proper way to snowblow the long driveway behind them.

The pickings are slim in December. Scant in January and February, too. People go nuts being cooped up day and night and they do crazy things. But cabin fever is not always fodder for splashy headlines.

Street punks look less menacing in the world of winter. They still have their struts and their hoodies, but they need to wear massive coats and knit caps, too. There is something emasculating about a tough guy wearing mittens. Especially if they’re the kind that are attached with strings so they won’t get lost. Pompoms on the hat are likewise deflating.

Ah, winter. As annoying as the roar of loud motorcycles is in summer, I miss it in the wretched months. It’s been replaced by the sounds of groaning snow plows and tires spinning hopelessly on road ice.

In summer, I walk the downtown streets and examine the temperament of the city. People are everywhere. They fill the parks and clog sidewalks. They buzz down streets in cars with music blasting. Half the population is shirtless and the other half barefoot. It’s a beautiful thing.

In winter, snow steals the sidewalks. Grumpy people in oversized coats fight for space on the sides of roads, and they rush to where they’re going. Not a “hi, how are you,” a “nice night” or a “get out of my way, freak” to be heard. Nothing but the high whine of spinning tires and boots crunching on dirty, crisp snow.

You’re right, I’m whining. I even make myself sick. Winter is what you make of it – it’s as true as can be.

When I was a boy, entire neighborhoods full of kids would gather outside on winter days as if guided by voices. We would spread out strategically and spend long afternoons hurling snowballs at cars. Ah, the whap! whap! whap! sounds of a hundred snowballs striking the side of a truck all at once. The giddy fun of the foot chase. The hysterics when some slow-footed dork got chased down and brought home to momma.

We used to play hockey on the ponds all day long, until the last of the pucks vanished behind the weeds and we could no longer feel our feet. Good times.

But then we all grew up, got jobs and started worrying about things like health insurance, snow tires and leaking roofs. What was joyous in youth is one gigantic pain in adulthood.

Maybe that’s why some of us despise winter, now that I think of it. The numbing cold, the brown snowbanks and the freakishly short days remind us that the carefree days of childhood have been greedily snatched from us and handed to a new generation.

But, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wax nostalgic. Pardon me all over the place. It’s just that I went outside just now and found a landscape that was cold, barren and joyless. Not a creature was stirring and there is just no news to be found. Which only leaves me an abundance of time to moan and groan, prattle and complain. And plenty of time to go wring out my socks.

(Mark LaFlamme covers crime for the Sun Journal. He tried living in the warm climes of the South once, but for some unknown reason he returned to Maine.)