Bill and Me
The
snow finally arrived early this morning. It’s a measly
three inches, but it’s better than nothing. I don’t know
who is more relieved to see it – me or Bill, the nice
weatherman on channel 18.
As for myself, I was afraid we’d eat through our extra
provisions before the storm arrived. When Bill first sang
out his alarm three days ago, I dashed to one of the three
mega-markets a half mile down the road to load up our
larder. Since the sun was shining, I didn’t even take time
to throw on a coat because I could tell from the sound of
Bill’s voice that this was going to be a big one, maybe a
monster. Almost running through the aisles, I grabbed the
essentials to sustain life: potato chips, doughnuts,
granola bars, cheetos, anything that doesn’t have to be
cooked. Oh, and because I’m trying to lose weight, a lot of
Diet Pepsi.
Back home, I began my three day, hour to hour, vigil along
with Bill. He tried to stay cheerful, laughing and smiling
every time he popped up on our HD screen, but I could tell
he was rattled as the hours stretched into days and no
flakes dropped from the heavens. To be honest, I began to
lose faith, and fretted that I’d eaten my Weight Watchers
points through the month of May in vain.
Bill, I think, has been worried about keeping his job. I
wouldn’t be one bit surprised if management has given him a
warning: whip us up a fine winter storm, Bill, or get lost.
“Who needs a TV weatherman if the weather is always fair?”
I can hear those budget-cutting miscreants grousing.
And poor Bill. At the last moment, one approaching storm
after another has jagged north to Ohio or south to
Tennessee, or to Eastern or Western Kentucky, and skipped
right over us folks in Lexington. As he apologized to
viewers last night, he explained that he’s like a surgeon.
He can get us prepped for surgery, get the operating room
ready, the scalpel sterilized, the gauze at hand, but if
the patient dies before the operation, there is nothing
more he can do.
Bill loves a good storm more than anybody I ever saw. If it
doesn’t kill people that is – Bill doesn’t have a mean bone
in him. Actually, his enthusiasm for aberrant weather
strikes an evangelistic chord. I truly believe he wants to
save the world from the whims of nature.
He’s young enough to be my son, and that’s a shame, because
I think he would have soared to stardom – maybe won a Nobel
Peace Prize – if he had lived through the kind of winters
we used to have before all this global warming got started,
back when men were men, and the county couldn’t afford
snowplows.
In the winter of 1976-77, we were living in Ashland in a
cold house that sat about two miles from the Ohio River. I
had a four year old, a two year old, and was expecting our
third child in March. Cynics may say that my personal
circumstances have exaggerated my memory of that winter,
but I beg to differ. According to the people who keep track
of these things, the snowfall that December, January, and
February was twice the annual average. The snow came to a
crescendo near the end of January when the Ohio River
Valley was hit with the tail end of a blizzard straight out
of Buffalo.
But it wasn’t the snow that stopped us in ’76-’77 – it was
the cold that wouldn’t let any of it melt. December’s first
snowflake was still with us when the spring thaw came. The
thermometer bottomed out in mid-January at
minus
25 degrees
Fahrenheit, and the Ohio River froze solid. The bold walked
from one shore to the other. The timid stayed inside
wrapped in quilts and coached their husbands on how to
deliver a baby “just in case.”
We didn’t think the next winter could get any worse here,
but it did. In January, 1978, nearby Cincinnati was hit
with a jaw-dropping 46 inches of snow, and upriver in
Ashland we had about the same amount. But every part of
Kentucky got at least 23 inches of snow that month
according to records kept by the state climatologist, Glenn
Conner. Early February dumped 11 more inches on the region.
Hemmed in for weeks at a time with an infant and two small
children, I decided one desperate day to bundle up the kids
and walk to my next door neighbor’s house for coffee and
human companionship. The Donner Pass would not have looked
more treacherous to me as I ventured out into the high,
narrow tunnel carved by shovels that connected our front
door to what might be left of civilization.
We’d made it to what vaguely looked like the street, when
one of the girls took a step off course and vanished from
sight. Somehow, juggling an infant in one arm and
frantically pulling and digging with the other, I rescued
the child before frostbite set in. We hurried back into our
cave and didn’t venture out again until the bears told us
the flowers were blooming.
Bill would’ve gotten a kick out of those Kentucky winters
in the seventies. He’s a man born too late to fulfill his
destiny.