The cold came on so fast this year. We'd had a couple of cold snaps in northern Appalachia this fall; it even snowed a little on November first. But the real wintry cold came in with a wind storm this weekend. It went from t-shirt weather to near freezing in six hours, and this time the cold is here to stay. I wore a coat for the first time this weekend as I went for a walk in my neighborhood, LaBelle, which the locals pronounce "LAY-bell" and call “The Hilltop” even though it's more of a cliff's edge overlooking downtown Steubenville. Mansions overlook downtown, with expensive houses for a couple blocks, and then the neighborhood I live in. I saw roses that were vibrant the day before, scrunched and faded like cabbages. Neglected gardens still had a few late tomatoes red on the vine, as their leaves shriveled and perished in the frost. The icy mid-November wind ripped papery leaves from the sycamores and shingles from the hundred-year-old foursquare houses.