Re: OT:Virginia Friends

From: HIPSource@aol.com

In a message dated 1/26/00 8:40:27 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
wmoores@watervalley.net writes:

<<  We have heard from Maryland and the Carolinas during the recent snow 
dump.  How are our Virginia friends?  Anner, Bill, Mike, and others....please 
report.>

Mawnin'  Walta and all. 

Anner and Henry here, and the catz, reporting in from Richmond, Virginia. 

It has been a lovely snow, very picturesque. It is quite substantial, 
although not a record breaker, I don't believe. I shoveled about fourteen 
inches off the stoop yesterday and more fell after that. I've got to dig out 
the back today and Henry is hoofing it to the store to stretch his legs and 
see if he can turn up some amusing spicy nibbles. The city is still moving 
slowly and we figure work can wait a couple of days. It only happens every so 
often. 
 
There was an enormous amount of wind associated with this storm, strong gusts 
to 35ph, and some areas are seeing a good deal of drifting. I have thigh high 
drifts in the back yard. Yesterday the city pretty well shut down. Driving 
conditions were hazardous with reports of even dumptrucks and snowplows on 
the shoulders of 1-95 north. We understood that the roads between here and DC 
were all but impassible and those east of here were worse. Still, it is 
comparatively small potatoes compared to the ice storm we had Christmas 
before last.

Yesterday visibility was very poor but the merry fleets of four wheel drive 
vehicles were out answering Richmond's traditional snowday call for 
volunteers to taxi medical personel and critical care patients to and from 
the hospitals, deliver meals to the infirm homebound, deliver prescriptions, 
and so forth. The city and state departments of transportation snow 
management crews were dealing with it as best they could, with salting, 
scraping, and chemicals, but the rate of accumulation was so steady that it 
was hard for them to make much headway until it stopped late yesterday. Most 
people have not dug their cars out since we know that there will be primarily 
be two kinds of drivers on the road at this point other than the fourwheel 
drive folk: those who are desperate and those who like to hold forth in an 
incensed tone about about how "people down here don't know how to drive in 
the snow."  Either type will kill you faster than you can say flake, so we 
generally leave them to get it out of their systems and just pray they don't 
plow into any more trees on the Boulevard.     

Over in the city parks the burn barrels are going, the sleds, snowboards, and 
skis are out and people have congregated for the winter promenade and cocoa 
fest. We are a pretty old town and snow makes us prettier. Snow day hats with 
pompoms come out of the closets along with favorite thirty year old fair isle 
sweaters and crabbing boots. Some of the dogs wear little red turtlenecks, 
others wear bandanas, and people stand around and talk with their neighbors 
about how they used to love snowdays when they were kids. It is simply bad 
form to contaminate the atmosphere by angsting about pending litigation, 
missed opportunities for stock market coups, sales lost because the parking 
lot is impassible, missed flights out of Richmond, or any of that stuff that 
can't be helped. Then, when the first drops of melted stuff start to fall off 
the dogwoods, we start to work on our drifts and cars. The good old boys jes' 
shovel their snow drifts into the back of their pickups for ballast. Now 
thass yo' classic sno'dump.

I talked to Mike Lowe down in Dinwiddie yesterday, checking in to see how 
things were, and they still had power and phones after a fashion, but driving 
was a real bear and they'd had to get the John Deer out to mash down the 
driveway.  I expect they are fine. Most of us down here keep larders with 
comfort foods, dried pinto beans, ham, and apple butter in them, because you 
jes' nevah know, and the real hysterics are all still eating the thousand 
dollars worth of canned tuna and bottled water they put aside for Y2K .

Anner Whitehead
HIPSource@aol.com

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Save 50 percent at MotherNature.com.  See site for details
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/MotherNature ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index