(Originally
published 2/11/13)
My
hometown dodged the worst of this recent
epic snowstorm. I would
estimate we received eight or nine inches in total, which is more than enough
when you have to shovel it—but at least it was not two or three feet. Once upon
a time, I loved snow and snowstorms—the bigger the better. I was a kid then and
wrongfully assumed this heartfelt joy would last forever. After all, what
wasn’t there to like about snow and its pristine blanket of white? I could not
imagine an individual alive
not appreciating the unique hush that big
snows spawned—for one brief shining moment at least—when everything and
anything came to a standstill.
A part of
me still relishes watching snow fall from the sky. But it is an increasingly
smaller part of me. Nowadays, any uplifting snowfall moments are remarkably
fleeting and cannot compete with the stark reality of shoveling it, driving in
it, and—most importantly—walking in it (sometimes for multiple days after the
fact).
From my
youthful perspective, snow inspired a heaping helping of fun and frolic in the
great outdoors—and, it should be noted, welcome snow days, too. The Monday,
February 6, 1978 blizzard is, for me, my all-time favorite snowstorm. Snow began
falling on Sunday night, the fifth, and continued through Tuesday morning, the
seventh. The seventeen inches or so that fell in New York City amounted to
three full days off from high school, a considerable fringe benefit. This was
the “Perfect Storm” in my book. As I recall, my high school re-opened its doors
on Thursday of that week, but it was difficult getting there. Snow-cleanup
technology and the New York City Department of Sanitation did not deal with
snow removal in the 1970s as well as they do today. Our “special buses” did not
show up that day, and we had to find alternate means of getting from the
Northwest Bronx to Northeast Bronx—“non-special” buses as it were.
Fast
forward thirty-plus years and here I am—a middle-aged man, still breathing
thankfully, and shoveling snow with a weighty prosthetic right leg. I can still
pull it off, which is reassuring—but for how long? There is a guy up the street
from me—an overweight senior citizen who smokes like a fiend, and has
difficulty walking even in sunny, warm climes—who was shoveling snow right
alongside me a couple of days ago. Several snow-shoveling entrepreneurs offered
to help both him and me, but we declined—courteously. I, for one, cannot afford
these contemporary snow shovelers' rates. Nobody is shoveling snow for five and
ten dollars anymore; it is more like fifty dollars or one hundred dollars for
an average job—and I do not blame them. Five dollars buys two slices of pizza
around here. Why break your back, or contribute to your chances of having a
heart attack, for two slices of pizza in an over-priced metropolis and rotten,
inflationary national economy?
It is not
just blizzards that are not what they once were; it is both my personal world
and the world at large. Perhaps dropping dead of a coronary thrombosis in a
snowbank is not such a bad way to go. You know—in that virgin blanket of white and
clean, crisp, cold air. But not this year…
(Photos
from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)
