Unlike the South, which was just slammed by ice and snow to disastrous results, we up here in the North have an infrastructure set up ready for such moments, due to the fact that we get cold icy weather all the time. My cousins in Atlanta told horror stories of what they went through, and they are one of many. It’s not Southerners are wimps, for God’s sake. It’s that they don’t have 20,000 snow plows at the ready, motors running, at the first sign of snow. The whole thing with weather is preparation, obviously. Here, we are prepared for ice. To sometimes ridiculous extremes. Seriously, one flake is seen, and suddenly snow plows prowl the streets, and sidewalks are being salted obsessively. We certainly can over-react sometimes, but that’s only based on experience where you know what it is like to be slammed (the blizzard a couple of years ago a perfect example, where there were neighborhoods in Brooklyn who never saw a snow plow: not one). So we had a snowstorm this week. It wasn’t overwhelming, but it did snow all day and left drifts. Snowplows did their thing, sidewalks were salted. The following day was sunny, but there were ominous reports coming in of freezing rain. As a New Englander, born and bred, you do not dread snow. It’s the freezing rain that really effs things up. And that’s what happened. It rained all day yesterday (I woke up to rain), and it was so cold out that it was freezing on the ground turning the sidewalks into slick ice-skating rinks. And the rain kept coming. There was a fire in the subway station at Times Square, due to the electricity and the flooding that was going on down there. I had to go into the city for a screening, and was amazed at the sheer mayhem of what was going on. It’s not the snow. It’s the rain. The sewer grates had flooded, leaving vast puddles on every corner that stretched out into the street. Puddles is a misnomer. These were deep POOLS. If you stepped in it, you’d be wet to the knee. So people had to walk around them, sometimes moving in single file over the one sheet of ice that remained through the damn Pool. The snow had been plowed, but the rain had caused melting and drifting, and the bike lanes were snowed-over, and those drifts slushes out into the street.
You just don’t see this that often in New York City where, as I said, we’re pretty prepared for snow, in terms of infrastructure. The infrastructure broke down. There were entire cross-city streets that had not been plowed, turning the street into a vast river of slush (cars were getting stuck, spinning their wheels), and along every curb was that deep pool of slush-water. It was unbelievable. What was even more unbelievable was the sort of good humor and politeness everyone was showing. Yes, an entire vast crowd of people had to queue up to walk in single file over a tight-rope of ice over a dark slushy pool, and nobody shoved, people just waited their turn. It was super-annoying, but whatever, it was an extraordinary circumstance and everyone did their best. There were workers out EVERYWHERE trying to blow back the snow, either with snow-blowers, or shovels, and there were guys out with shovels right in the middle of the street. This was on 8th Avenue and 44th Street, one of the busiest areas in New York, and it was completely buried in slush and people were walking in the middle of the street so that they wouldn’t have to SWIM through the damn LAKE to make it to the curb.
That’s not a puddle. That’s a LAKE. If you stepped in it, you’d go up to your knees. The entire crowd trying to cross considered the situation, weighing our options. Cars barreled through sending up tidal waves of dark slushy spray.
I got to the plush screening room and felt like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, having walked just 5 blocks to get there. It had been like an Outward Bound project, walking those five blocks. My commute home was absolutely insane. It was like the world had gone crazy. Because of SLUSH. I had to walk to my apartment in the middle of a street because the slush and ice situation was so out of control on the sidewalks.
Beautifully, despite the driving freezing rain, there were New Yorkers lining up in it for lunch.
One guy was shoveling in what appeared to be a totally hopeless situation. The street was not plowed. The slush was up almost to his knee. There was a LAKE along the curb and it was half-a-foot deep. A taxi spun its wheels behind him, sending up sprays of slush, and the car was stuck, couldn’t go forward, couldn’t go back. This dude stood there, with one measly shovel, scooping away at the slush, scooping away what water he could. He was so awesome I had to stop and talk with him. He was just one man against a WALL of slush. And there he was, scoop scoop scoop with this small shovel, a job that clearly called for a gigantic snowplow. But he had civic pride, he saw the mayhem and he tried to help. I talked to him for a second or two, and he laughed at the situation, and just at that moment, a huge white stretch limo turned onto the street, right behind the taxi that couldn’t move because its wheels were stuck. We both saw the limo turn, the guy stared at it, and said, deadpan, “You have got to be kidding me” and went back to shoveling. I asked him if I could take his picture, “because you are totally awesome,” and he said Yes.
There’s hope for humanity in such an individual. Not just because he decided to get out there and help, scooping away at a mountain of slush with what amounts to a thimble, but because he did so with humor and a deadpan acceptance of absurdity.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
