BY NOW, my parents have the Thursday night schedule down cold, so to speak. Eat a little dinner. Watch a little TV. And get ready to dig out from the latest blizzard to hit Colorado.
That’s right. Those blizzards. The ones that have hit the evening news like clockwork since just before Christmas. My folks have been through three rounds of this now and are bracing for the fourth — due to shut everything down, yet again, on a Thursday.
“At least you can kind of plan on it,” Mom told me during our latest phone chat.
I guess so. But what a plan!
“There just doesn’t seem to be an end to this stuff,” Dad said after the latest round with the shovel and snow blower.
Don’t get me wrong. In my opinion, winter is the most beautiful time of the year. I love the shine of a snowdrift and the zing of a chill breeze. Heck, I’ve been dreaming of a White Christmas since before I ever heard of Bing Crosby.
But even for a snowhead like me, there’s a point where beauty becomes excess. And I think that point was reached about 20 inches ago.
Now the news is getting scary.
I’m not talking about the usual car accidents and flight delays that come with every winter. I’m talking about things like an avalanche that knocked two cars off of Berthoud Pass, amazingly without killing anyone. Or things like the thousands of cattle that got walled off by 10-foot-high snowdrifts and had to be fed by helicopter.
It’s disaster, plain and simple. And it’s happening on a schedule as rigid as a hit TV sitcom: If it’s Thursday, there will be snow.
I don’t mean to keep harping on that point. But it refuses to leave my mind. I somehow get the picture of a car stuck on the railroad tracks with a freight train bearing down — you can see exactly what’s coming and it doesn’t help one bit.
Well, maybe it’s not a perfect analogy. After all, once a train hits, there’s usually not much you can do. But when a blizzard — no, a series of blizzards — of this magnitude hits, there’s a lot that can still be done and it needs to be done fast.
And that’s the wonderful thing. More often than not, what needs to happen, happens.
Anybody who has a jaded view of human nature has never watched Coloradoans after a snowstorm. Even under normal circumstances, it’s not uncommon for neighbors to help each other clear the sidewalk and shovel the driveway. And as for abnormal circumstances ... well, take a look.
Take a look at the postmen who volunteered for Christmas duty to try and get a few more packages through the mess.
Or the folks in southeast Colorado who fired up the front-end loaders to help free their neighbors’ ranches.
Or all the nameless people who helped bring food, free cars or in some way get help where it needed to be. You had all the “usual suspects” — police, fire, National Guard — plus some more unusual ones, such as inmates from the Pueblo County Jail.
It’s something every Kansan can understand. When a storm hits, you are your brother’s keeper.
“This is so much like Greeley’s original pioneers who had to brave the elements to make this settlement a success,” an editorial from The Greeley Tribune read. “...It was encouraging to see that pioneer spirit relived during the challenges of the storm.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
But next Thursday, how about we set up a Trivial Pursuit tournament instead?
Scott Rochat’s e-mail address is rochat@emporiagazette.com.
hjcary (anonymous) says...
This is my 12th winter here in the Denver area and in most of that time we have been in a drought. As far as blizzards go we had one in October 1998, March 2003 and now Dec 2006. People think of Colorado as constantly getting feet of snow but that is just the mountains. I talk to my family in Emporia at least twice a week and we always compare notes and it is usually warmer here in CO and if we do get snow its usually melted by noon the next day. Now here we are with mountains of snow in every parking lot and wondering when we will see land again. We are actually experiencing what the rest of the world thinks CO is like all the time :) For us who live in CO we are used to sunshine and shorts in winter and now we are getting a bit tired of all the snow and ice. I must say blizzards are a fun time because after it quits snowing you get to visit with your neighbors while you shovel eachother out. We shoveled our neigbors walk storm before last and then he did our walk last week guess its our turn this week :)
January 9, 2007 at 2:28 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )