WARNING: Not to be taken too seriously!
The first few flakes of Snowzilla floated down from the heavens on Friday, January 22, 2016 at 12.59PM. I was driving home from D.C. and was wondering what a 36-hour blizzard would be like. 36 hours of snow was quite ludicrous by any standard. We had just survived what had become known as the “Angry Inch” in D.C. on Wednesday night and now this? We were in the midst of a global warming scare and then they try to cover it up by putting on a show like this? And I had this strange image embedded in my mind and it wouldn’t go away. We were all going to be up to our necks in s....now.
Some 36 hours later, with everywhere from Georgia to New York under several feet of snow, I was feeling woozy, discombobulated and almost blind after watching 13 movies, non-stop CNN advertising for some Hillary, Bernie, O’Malley Final Case debate on Monday, and Wolf Blizzard--I mean Blitzer--purring through endless interviews on why Donald Trump or Ted Cruz or Hillary or Bernie or Joe Biden or Bloomberg or Jeb Bush were going to win or lose in Iowa or New Hampshire or South Carolina or on Super Tuesday etc., etc. I was out of it. Punch drunk with snow updates and technical definitions of what a blizzard might be, hearing strange noises as snow and ice slid off my roof during the night, hounded by howling winds, and fear of not getting enough green vegetables and running out of alcohol. And everything I saw looked white. Was this the Oscars all over again?
All I knew 36 hours later was that someone on CNN (Wolf, Chuck, Dave, Dan, Dana, Doppler?) was saying that Snowzilla had finally given up and had gone somewhere else, maybe to Davos or Nepal? It was over. But I could still hear howling winds and people were shouting and, oh, I had sat on the remote by mistake and some disaster movie was blaring away.
I finally staggered outside about 10AM on Sunday and couldn’t believe what I saw. We were back in Kansas (or at least Falls Church) and, amazingly, we were still alive. Sort of.
I was thrilled to see that all the houses were still neatly aligned along Greenway Blvd, that the sky was blue and and that our little world was absolutely pristine in the bright sunshine. I felt like Noah seeing something green at long last.
The rest of today is a bit of a haze, so please forgive me. I think these were some of the things that happened. But I can’t be sure. Man, 36 hours of Snowzilla and CNN will do bad things to your mind.
Click on “Read more” below if you don’t have anything better to do and see some more photos of Life after Snowzilla.
This is my neighbor, Cisco, next door, on top of his car, clearing snow off the roof. I think he is my neighbor. He was at it for a long time and, very slowly, the form of a car began to appear from under the pile of snow. I asked him if he was sure that it was his car. He gave me an odd look. Siempre! He kept digging.
I was going to explain why I had asked the question but, alas, there was a bit of a language barrier and I couldn’t remember why I had asked that question anyway. But in my fuzzy mind, I knew there was a reason for asking him that question. Stay with me.
We used to have these extreme snowstorms in Montreal when I lived there way back in the 70s and digging cars out of deep snow was a common ritual but sometimes a frustrating exercise.
I had a white Volkswagen Beetle in those days. It was a bit ancient (it had 170,000 miles on it when I bought it) but it did at least another 40,000 miles before I traded it in for a 6-cylinder AMC Gremlin. Don’t ask. But, I digress.
After one of Montreal’s worst snow storms ever--the city closed down for 3 days--I started digging my white VW Bug out of about 7 feet of snow (no joking). Slowly, ever so slowly, I dug that wretched Bug out, removed the snow from all around her, brushed that darned white stuff off the remaining paintwork, and proudly put my key in the lock. Good job.
The key would not turn. Ice? I sprayed Dee-Freeze into the lock. Nothing. I used a little force (kicking the side of the car can sometimes help) but still nothing happened. And then I noticed the number plate. This was not my white VW Bug. Aaaaargh! I screamed really bad words in French, Quebecois, English and Welsh and beat the bonnet in a rage. My white Bug turned out to be right behind a complete stranger’s white Bug under another 7 feet of snow. What were the chances? I had to start all over again. I never found out whose car it was; but I bet she thought that God was alive and well and smiling down on her somewhere high above Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest!
Now I remember why I asked my neighbor that question. I had been trying to save him the trouble of digging out the wrong car. Siempre! Why is my head feeling so bad?
There's my neighbor, Joe Cook, still with quite a way to go before his new snow path meets the tarmac on Greenway Blvd. I had walked to the 711 store with him yesterday. I suggested we wander around the ‘hood to see what the damage looked like. We headed off. It was a sunny day. The world looked all white and wonderful. We had suffered no power outages, no roof collapse, no water loss, no real deprivation and, most importantly, people still had The Google, and Facebook and Cable TV. We had survived.
But then I remembered that they had not delivered our newspapers this morning. No Washington Post for Joe; and no New York Times for me. I suggested that we head on down to 711 to get our newspapers. “Do you think they will have any newspapers?” Joe asked. “Sure,” I said, not feeling at all sure. “The storm is over, right? Everything will be back to normal now.”
That started me thinking. Trump might be right. America was in big trouble if you couldn’t even get a newspaper delivered after a bit of snow. Do you think this would happen under ISIS? I became convinced there and then that The Donald would put a stop to this slow decline of our once proud nation.
Along the way, we bumped into our new neighbor, Heather, and her two twins, Adelaide and Nora. Hubby Phil and Clara the new-born were clearing the driveway back home. They live in Cottontop’s old house.
We suddenly realized that Greenway Blvd had been plowed! It hadn’t seen a plow in about 13 years. What had gone wrong? No use asking Heather--she was new here and probably thought plows were quite normal. Joe and I were just plain confused. Had we paid our County taxes by mistake or something?
And there’s Felisa, our neighbor who lives diagonally across from us on Farragut Street. She was digging out too; but was also genuinely amazed that a plow had found its way onto Greenway Blvd. Maybe it had taken a wrong turn or something? We were discussing this strange turn of events (no pun intended) when we were nearly mowed down by a plow thundering along Farragut Street. Farragut Street? They had not seen a snow plow or even a horse-drawn plow on Farragut Street since George Washington’s time. What on earth was happening? Look at the speed of that sucker below!
Everywhere we looked, people were diligently digging out but, against all odds, the roads around us were being plowed. This was insane. We would have nothing to whine about; and certainly no basis for sending letters to Fairfax County and the Virginia Department of Transportation, along with digital photos showing unplowed streets full of snow in late April. Our raison d’être was being plowed away all around us.
There was another plow--on the service road along side Arlington Boulevard aka Route 50. Unbelievable. Had Trump already been elected? Was everything working like he said it would be?The snowplow guy even waved at us. This was the New America. The Donald had done it! Holy Mackerel.
Even on Route 50 big trucks were swooshing along, beautiful black tarmac emerging everywhere. The Donald must have sent in the National Guard or the Seventh Cavalry or Sarah Palin or something? This was not the Falls Church of yore. This was definitely Trumpland. I liked it.
And they were doing everything with military precision. Look at those straight lines on our service road below. It was almost like those strange crop patterns that appear overnight in cornfields in England and elsewhere. Aliens? No, not with The Donald in charge, surely. What had happened to the zig zag lines and those beaten up manhole covers the plows usually left lying around on the roadway?
Meanwhile, at 711, there was a long line of cars, trucks and people waiting to resume their normal lives. People wanting coffee, doughnuts, croissants, Big Gulps, Budweisers, massive packs of Ruffles and Doritos. Other people clamoring for Marlboro cigarettes, lottery tickets, really bad chicken wings that had been sitting on a congealed tray for 36 hours, huge bottles of Coke and Pepsi and even a person wanting cat food. The world had come back to normal. Snowzilla was gone, a distant memory. I almost wanted to hug Joe. We were saved. 711 was alive and well and poisoning everyone as usual. What a great country, goddamit. Of course Bloomberg could never get elected.
“Excuse me, do you have The Washington Post and New York Times,” I asked in italics. I was expecting the guy behind the counter to give me a big smile and a free Donald Trump T-shirt and to say “Siempre”. Of course. Instead, he gave me a withering look and said in an accent that I had last heard somewhere south of Uttar Pradesh: “No newspaper dailies coming in today”.
Joe and I looked at each other. The world was supposed to be coming back to normal. The Donald was in charge and things were supposed to be working again, right? Joe said in a slightly panicked voice, “Do you have any newspapers”. “Over there," he said pointing to a ramshackle rack leaning against the big beige and green ATM machine that had a handwritten notice stuck to it which said “No Money”.
We walked over to the rack. There was Thursday's Washington Post; a slightly dirty looking Washington Times missing half the front page and which may have been used to clean the floor the night before; and Friday’s USA TODAY. Joe picked it up, looked at it and, thinking he had not noticed that it was Friday’s paper, I offered the following thought: “Umm, Joe, that’s Friday’s paper. Today is Sunday. You need today’s paper. Sunday. You OK?”.
“I know that, but I just want a newspaper. I been missing my paper--style section, crossword, sudoko, football, that sort of thing”. I nearly fainted when they charged him $2.12 for a two day-old newspaper. Trump must be putting up prices already, I thought. He wasn’t going to put up with any more of this 1% stuff. He was going to get it down to the .0000001%.
I have to say that I was more than a little dejected. What was I going to do for the rest of Sunday? Watch more TV, more movies, wash the dishes, do the laundry? No real need. I was by myself. So, what would I do? When I got home, I remembered that in all the excitement of Snowzilla, I had forgotten to eat something 36 hours before and before going out today. Maybe that was why my head felt funny?
Nothing like a fry up to clear the mind. After eating, I felt a lot better and finally determined that it was, after all, a rather beautiful afternoon. The sun was shining, everyone was out there digging and I decided that I should join them. I know, I know, I have a bad back and someone dropped dead in D.C. shoveling snow. But my heart was strong, I would take lots of breaks and bend my knees and think about how lucky we were to have survived. Besides, it would be un-neighborly of me to leave my driveway untouched and looking as though I didn’t care. Now where was that shovel I had bought at Home Depot on Thursday?
Here’s the result below. I am immensely proud of it considering my back was not really working all that well. I named it the Newport Memorial Walkway just in case I dropped dead. It may only be one snow shovel-wide but it is enough to give access to friends and neighbors; and to permit the mail man to walk confidently up to my mail box tomorrow and deliver the letter informing me that I have won the lottery. Did I tell you I had bought a Power Ball ticket at 711?
So, all was well on Greenway Blvd. We had all shoveled and dug and salted and pimped our driveways--and generally moved a lot of snow around. It had been an excellent day; and there was a new sense of community and bonhomie up and down Greenway Blvd. Perhaps we have The Donald and Snowzilla to thank for all this? I can’t wait to get my New York Times tomorrow and read all about how good life will be from now on. On the other hand, I could always switch on CNN to find out what’s going on right now. Yes, CNN. What a great idea. I wonder what’s happening in Iowa?
The first few flakes of Snowzilla floated down from the heavens on Friday, January 22, 2016 at 12.59PM. I was driving home from D.C. and was wondering what a 36-hour blizzard would be like. 36 hours of snow was quite ludicrous by any standard. We had just survived what had become known as the “Angry Inch” in D.C. on Wednesday night and now this? We were in the midst of a global warming scare and then they try to cover it up by putting on a show like this? And I had this strange image embedded in my mind and it wouldn’t go away. We were all going to be up to our necks in s....now.
Some 36 hours later, with everywhere from Georgia to New York under several feet of snow, I was feeling woozy, discombobulated and almost blind after watching 13 movies, non-stop CNN advertising for some Hillary, Bernie, O’Malley Final Case debate on Monday, and Wolf Blizzard--I mean Blitzer--purring through endless interviews on why Donald Trump or Ted Cruz or Hillary or Bernie or Joe Biden or Bloomberg or Jeb Bush were going to win or lose in Iowa or New Hampshire or South Carolina or on Super Tuesday etc., etc. I was out of it. Punch drunk with snow updates and technical definitions of what a blizzard might be, hearing strange noises as snow and ice slid off my roof during the night, hounded by howling winds, and fear of not getting enough green vegetables and running out of alcohol. And everything I saw looked white. Was this the Oscars all over again?
All I knew 36 hours later was that someone on CNN (Wolf, Chuck, Dave, Dan, Dana, Doppler?) was saying that Snowzilla had finally given up and had gone somewhere else, maybe to Davos or Nepal? It was over. But I could still hear howling winds and people were shouting and, oh, I had sat on the remote by mistake and some disaster movie was blaring away.
I finally staggered outside about 10AM on Sunday and couldn’t believe what I saw. We were back in Kansas (or at least Falls Church) and, amazingly, we were still alive. Sort of.
I was thrilled to see that all the houses were still neatly aligned along Greenway Blvd, that the sky was blue and and that our little world was absolutely pristine in the bright sunshine. I felt like Noah seeing something green at long last.
The rest of today is a bit of a haze, so please forgive me. I think these were some of the things that happened. But I can’t be sure. Man, 36 hours of Snowzilla and CNN will do bad things to your mind.
Click on “Read more” below if you don’t have anything better to do and see some more photos of Life after Snowzilla.
I was going to explain why I had asked the question but, alas, there was a bit of a language barrier and I couldn’t remember why I had asked that question anyway. But in my fuzzy mind, I knew there was a reason for asking him that question. Stay with me.
We used to have these extreme snowstorms in Montreal when I lived there way back in the 70s and digging cars out of deep snow was a common ritual but sometimes a frustrating exercise.
I had a white Volkswagen Beetle in those days. It was a bit ancient (it had 170,000 miles on it when I bought it) but it did at least another 40,000 miles before I traded it in for a 6-cylinder AMC Gremlin. Don’t ask. But, I digress.
After one of Montreal’s worst snow storms ever--the city closed down for 3 days--I started digging my white VW Bug out of about 7 feet of snow (no joking). Slowly, ever so slowly, I dug that wretched Bug out, removed the snow from all around her, brushed that darned white stuff off the remaining paintwork, and proudly put my key in the lock. Good job.
The key would not turn. Ice? I sprayed Dee-Freeze into the lock. Nothing. I used a little force (kicking the side of the car can sometimes help) but still nothing happened. And then I noticed the number plate. This was not my white VW Bug. Aaaaargh! I screamed really bad words in French, Quebecois, English and Welsh and beat the bonnet in a rage. My white Bug turned out to be right behind a complete stranger’s white Bug under another 7 feet of snow. What were the chances? I had to start all over again. I never found out whose car it was; but I bet she thought that God was alive and well and smiling down on her somewhere high above Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest!
Now I remember why I asked my neighbor that question. I had been trying to save him the trouble of digging out the wrong car. Siempre! Why is my head feeling so bad?
There's my neighbor, Joe Cook, still with quite a way to go before his new snow path meets the tarmac on Greenway Blvd. I had walked to the 711 store with him yesterday. I suggested we wander around the ‘hood to see what the damage looked like. We headed off. It was a sunny day. The world looked all white and wonderful. We had suffered no power outages, no roof collapse, no water loss, no real deprivation and, most importantly, people still had The Google, and Facebook and Cable TV. We had survived.
But then I remembered that they had not delivered our newspapers this morning. No Washington Post for Joe; and no New York Times for me. I suggested that we head on down to 711 to get our newspapers. “Do you think they will have any newspapers?” Joe asked. “Sure,” I said, not feeling at all sure. “The storm is over, right? Everything will be back to normal now.”
That started me thinking. Trump might be right. America was in big trouble if you couldn’t even get a newspaper delivered after a bit of snow. Do you think this would happen under ISIS? I became convinced there and then that The Donald would put a stop to this slow decline of our once proud nation.
Along the way, we bumped into our new neighbor, Heather, and her two twins, Adelaide and Nora. Hubby Phil and Clara the new-born were clearing the driveway back home. They live in Cottontop’s old house.
We suddenly realized that Greenway Blvd had been plowed! It hadn’t seen a plow in about 13 years. What had gone wrong? No use asking Heather--she was new here and probably thought plows were quite normal. Joe and I were just plain confused. Had we paid our County taxes by mistake or something?
And there’s Felisa, our neighbor who lives diagonally across from us on Farragut Street. She was digging out too; but was also genuinely amazed that a plow had found its way onto Greenway Blvd. Maybe it had taken a wrong turn or something? We were discussing this strange turn of events (no pun intended) when we were nearly mowed down by a plow thundering along Farragut Street. Farragut Street? They had not seen a snow plow or even a horse-drawn plow on Farragut Street since George Washington’s time. What on earth was happening? Look at the speed of that sucker below!
Everywhere we looked, people were diligently digging out but, against all odds, the roads around us were being plowed. This was insane. We would have nothing to whine about; and certainly no basis for sending letters to Fairfax County and the Virginia Department of Transportation, along with digital photos showing unplowed streets full of snow in late April. Our raison d’être was being plowed away all around us.
There was another plow--on the service road along side Arlington Boulevard aka Route 50. Unbelievable. Had Trump already been elected? Was everything working like he said it would be?The snowplow guy even waved at us. This was the New America. The Donald had done it! Holy Mackerel.
Even on Route 50 big trucks were swooshing along, beautiful black tarmac emerging everywhere. The Donald must have sent in the National Guard or the Seventh Cavalry or Sarah Palin or something? This was not the Falls Church of yore. This was definitely Trumpland. I liked it.
And they were doing everything with military precision. Look at those straight lines on our service road below. It was almost like those strange crop patterns that appear overnight in cornfields in England and elsewhere. Aliens? No, not with The Donald in charge, surely. What had happened to the zig zag lines and those beaten up manhole covers the plows usually left lying around on the roadway?
Big, powerful trucks were moving at amazing speeds. It looked almost as though they were straight out of some Big Buck Truck magazine or Hauler’s Humvees Hunlimited. I was truly flabbed.
Meanwhile, at 711, there was a long line of cars, trucks and people waiting to resume their normal lives. People wanting coffee, doughnuts, croissants, Big Gulps, Budweisers, massive packs of Ruffles and Doritos. Other people clamoring for Marlboro cigarettes, lottery tickets, really bad chicken wings that had been sitting on a congealed tray for 36 hours, huge bottles of Coke and Pepsi and even a person wanting cat food. The world had come back to normal. Snowzilla was gone, a distant memory. I almost wanted to hug Joe. We were saved. 711 was alive and well and poisoning everyone as usual. What a great country, goddamit. Of course Bloomberg could never get elected.
“Excuse me, do you have The Washington Post and New York Times,” I asked in italics. I was expecting the guy behind the counter to give me a big smile and a free Donald Trump T-shirt and to say “Siempre”. Of course. Instead, he gave me a withering look and said in an accent that I had last heard somewhere south of Uttar Pradesh: “No newspaper dailies coming in today”.
Joe and I looked at each other. The world was supposed to be coming back to normal. The Donald was in charge and things were supposed to be working again, right? Joe said in a slightly panicked voice, “Do you have any newspapers”. “Over there," he said pointing to a ramshackle rack leaning against the big beige and green ATM machine that had a handwritten notice stuck to it which said “No Money”.
We walked over to the rack. There was Thursday's Washington Post; a slightly dirty looking Washington Times missing half the front page and which may have been used to clean the floor the night before; and Friday’s USA TODAY. Joe picked it up, looked at it and, thinking he had not noticed that it was Friday’s paper, I offered the following thought: “Umm, Joe, that’s Friday’s paper. Today is Sunday. You need today’s paper. Sunday. You OK?”.
“I know that, but I just want a newspaper. I been missing my paper--style section, crossword, sudoko, football, that sort of thing”. I nearly fainted when they charged him $2.12 for a two day-old newspaper. Trump must be putting up prices already, I thought. He wasn’t going to put up with any more of this 1% stuff. He was going to get it down to the .0000001%.
I have to say that I was more than a little dejected. What was I going to do for the rest of Sunday? Watch more TV, more movies, wash the dishes, do the laundry? No real need. I was by myself. So, what would I do? When I got home, I remembered that in all the excitement of Snowzilla, I had forgotten to eat something 36 hours before and before going out today. Maybe that was why my head felt funny?
Nothing like a fry up to clear the mind. After eating, I felt a lot better and finally determined that it was, after all, a rather beautiful afternoon. The sun was shining, everyone was out there digging and I decided that I should join them. I know, I know, I have a bad back and someone dropped dead in D.C. shoveling snow. But my heart was strong, I would take lots of breaks and bend my knees and think about how lucky we were to have survived. Besides, it would be un-neighborly of me to leave my driveway untouched and looking as though I didn’t care. Now where was that shovel I had bought at Home Depot on Thursday?
Here’s the result below. I am immensely proud of it considering my back was not really working all that well. I named it the Newport Memorial Walkway just in case I dropped dead. It may only be one snow shovel-wide but it is enough to give access to friends and neighbors; and to permit the mail man to walk confidently up to my mail box tomorrow and deliver the letter informing me that I have won the lottery. Did I tell you I had bought a Power Ball ticket at 711?
So, all was well on Greenway Blvd. We had all shoveled and dug and salted and pimped our driveways--and generally moved a lot of snow around. It had been an excellent day; and there was a new sense of community and bonhomie up and down Greenway Blvd. Perhaps we have The Donald and Snowzilla to thank for all this? I can’t wait to get my New York Times tomorrow and read all about how good life will be from now on. On the other hand, I could always switch on CNN to find out what’s going on right now. Yes, CNN. What a great idea. I wonder what’s happening in Iowa?
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