I swear this is the truth.
It was February 2, 1975 and I was managing a regional planning and development commission in rural Pennsylvania. We covered a six-county area that included Punxsutawney, so we thought it would be fun if everyone in the office attended Groundhog Day.
Most of the 15 of us who were going stayed up the night before, playing a vicious Monopoly tournament (that's the kind of stuff we did for fun back then, before anything was invented). At about 4 am, we started the 90 minute drive down - it was bitterly cold, a bit below zero, and there was fresh snow on the ground. We got to Gobbler's Knob well before the sun came up, and at that time, Gobbler's Knob was somewhere outside of town, a large clearing about a quarter mile walk into the woods from the field where everyone parked.
We stood around freezing miserably for an hour or so and finally a bunch of very old men wearing top hats and undertaker suits showed up, along with news crews and cameras. And then we had the Shadow Casting.
Unfortunately, a couple of days earlier, Phil had expired, and it being the middle of winter, with all good groundhogs safely tucked away in their dens, no replacement could be found. So they had buried a stuffed groundhog in a box with a spring under him, and when one of the officials yanked the cord, this very obviously dead, stuffed and mangy groundhog popped up out of the ground and, surprise!, didn't see his shadow - or anything else. An early spring was proclaimed and we all headed into town to the big pancake breakfast, which was at least not totally bogus.
And that was my Groundhog Day.
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