I got a letter in the mail the other day. Remember letters? Remember those messages that came mostly in white envelopes and were left in your mail box? I used to get them all the time from friends, relatives, radio listeners, readers of this column, libel attorneys (just kidding).

Our modes of communication have become so modern and so sophisticated in recent years. Everyone can now stay in touch by texting and Facebook and Skype – three options that were unknown to most of us just a few years ago.

Oh, I still get an occasional letter, I just don’t get anywhere near the number I used to get.

I bring this up about letters because just the other day I was surprised to get not just a letter, but a fat envelope containing a several-page, handwritten letter. It was from a neighbor who, for some strange reason, insists on leaving Maine in early December to spend winters in Coral Gables. I know – go figure.

While we’re up here in Maine having all kinds of fun chopping and stacking wood, thawing pipes, calling the furnace repair guy, thawing more pipes, shoveling and sanding walks, replacing pipes that froze and falling on icy sidewalks, he’s down there in Coral Gables dealing with things like his golf game, his deep-sea fishing trips and those gin and tonics by the pool.

Is that any way for a Down Easter to live?

He claims he’s having a great time but I know he’s lying because after a brief four or five months down there dealing with all that hot sun and those balmy breezes, he wants to come back to Maine. In his letter, he tried his best to make it sound like it was day after day of nothing but fun down there in Florida, but I wasn’t buying any of it. Toward the end of his letter he got around to asking if he’d missed anything while he was in Florida.

After thinking it over for a while, I soon realized how many exciting things he had missed since he left last November, but I had no intention of telling him the truth about the relatively mild winter we’d had. I sat down and started writing.

In my return letter, I told him about the December cold snap that he just barely missed by leaving when he did. Knowing he’d be interested, I went on for some length about the record low temperatures we’ve had ever since that early freeze.

I knew he’d feel sorry about missing that morning in January when it was 19 below zero at kitchen window thermometer, so I went into some detail there, telling about how bad the pickup sounded when it finally got going and how the pipes in the downstairs bathroom froze solid – something they’d never done before.

And what review of winter would be complete without mentioning how thick the ice got this winter on roads and walkways?

I wrote that a lot of the roads around here are now so bumpy, you’d rattle the cavities right out of your teeth if you drove over them any distance.

Saving the best for last I finally told him about the town meeting we just had the other week at the high school and how the different factions in town almost came to blows over one article or another. I knew he’d feel awful about missing the homegrown excitement that only our town can produce. I just hope he doesn’t learn what really happened.

John McDonald is the author of five books on Maine, including “John McDonald’s Maine Trivia: A User’s Guide to Useless Information.” Contact him at [email protected].