The storm of the decade began along the Shoreline just after sundown on Saturday. This, of course, gave us time to tear around like lunatics buying everything that wasn’t nailed down regardless of whether we needed it or not: it was gonna snow!!! A LOT!!! So we now needed stuff we never needed before.
And snow it did; into the night and when night became cold Sunday morning it was still snowing. Unlike the majority of Connecticut snowstorms this one hit the coast the hardest, leaving only a few inches north and west and an average of a foot along the coastal areas.
Oh joy.
By eight a.m. Bob and I were out starting to clear the stuff. We live on a steep hill on a deadend without a garage. When we have to clear snow the only place to put the stuff is in the street. Without a plow in sight we got to work. Bob with the snowthrower and me, trudging through the backyard taking snow pictures. A yeadstick sunk nearly 15 inches into the untouched snow on a table on our back deck. Ooh fah. A trio of chickadees yelled at me from the red maple tree.
When I lived in Manhattan back in the eighties, a big snowstorm was a party. No need to drive or shovel….it was clean, quiet and magical. There was a January storm which dumped something like eighteen inches of snow in Central Park; a college buddy of mine and I spent the day romping in Central Park….it was like being a kid again. And might have been the last time I really LIKED a good snowstorm because once I moved to the ‘burbs….uh uh. Don’t make me drive in it.
Back to the clean-up effort. Now the neighbors are out in force and everyone is wondering where the city plow is. There had been a sighting earlier in the morning at the top of our street but the plow had left without coming down the lower part of the street where we live. A call to Public Works assured me a plow would be around soon but two hours later…at noon…still no plow.
I have an all wheel drive vehicle BUT even that would not have gotten me up the hill and out with the amount of snow we had on the road. Nice that none of us had to get to work because none of us would have.
We have a cement parking “pad” in front of our house so that we at least have off-street parking. In order to clear it of snow we need to move the vehicles into the street. In doing so we noticed that one of my back tires was looking pretty pretty flat…not all the way flat but on the way to all the way flat and in need of immediate attention. Okay great. It’s SUNDAY and there is a boatload of snow on the ground and nary a plow in sight….not promising for tire repair.
A phone call to Sears Auto Center revealed that they would be open until 5:00 and that they would repair a flat. Now we just needed a plow….
At 1:07pm a plow arrived!!!! Praise Jesus we would all be saved. He plowed he sanded and we were good to go. In the meantime Bob (also known as my knight in a parka) had decided he would take the deflating tire off my car and put on the “doughnut”…not an easy task in weather like we had on Sunday. “no problem,” he said. Done. And we were off to Sears.
We arrived at the Sears Auto Center at 1:45. A really nice guy named Scott helped us and it became clear that my tire problem was wear and tear and so I had to bite the bullet and go for four new tires. Just what someone who is only working part-time needs. Merry Christmas to me! I asked Scott how long it would take and was told “about an hour and a half”.
Off to the freezing cold “customer lounge” we went where they did have a nice flat screen TV so we could watch the Jets choke. At 3:18 my car finally appeared in the garage and was put into bay #11 and up on the lift.
And there it sat. Everytime I looked into the garage there was no one near it doing anything.
And this was the story for at least the next half hour until finally a mechanic appeared and, seemingly in slow motion, mounted, balanced and replaced my four tires.
We left Sears Auto Center three hours after we had arrived.
The snow pile at the end of our street (which is basically in front of our house) reminds me of college in Oswego. It might melt by July.
I write this on the first day of winter…the winter solstice…something to celebrate only because the days will now start getting longer.
The most wonderful time of the year, my ass.
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- Pam And Bob’s Excellent Adventure
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