Blizzard envy

Throughout the past weekend, weather reports couldn't contain their excitement. The Boston area would get hit by another Storm of the Century, a new Blizzard of '78.  With snowflakes beginning to spin through the air in downtown Boston, workers prepared to leave early, toting their laptops home for a snow day to follow.

It's easy to get all nostalgic about the days when you watched the snow line creep up the outside of your first-story windows, had to shoulder open the front door because there was a drift against it, and cleared a bathroom area for the dog.  He was at first stymied by snow deeper than his shoulders, but then remembered how to dolphin through it and race, all crazy-dog, in big circles until he was exhausted.

As long as you didn't have to deliver the newspaper or staff an ER, a Snow Day felt as if you were getting away with something, working at home or not working at all. For a few short hours, you made popcorn, baked cookies, fired up the wood stove, watched movies, played games, and acted like a kid who didn't have to do homework for a night.

At least until the power went out or you realized this stuff had to be shoveled and you were the only grownups in the house. And shoveling became a priority as soon as the plow went down the street, blocking your driveway with a containing wall that promised to turn concrete sometime soon.

Gary and Paula Skorb's driveway in Rutland, MA, says it all.

Our good friend Karen Mercer never minded tramping through two feet of snow, from her place up a brambly hill, through a vacant lot, to our place, because it was good exercise. Besides, there was a bottle of wine and a good meal at the other end. Crashing on the couch instead of tramping home was always an option.

She still likes to tramp through two feet of snow, from her place to downtown Exeter, New Hampshire, for a pomegranate martini at 11 Water Street's downstairs bar overlooking the frozen Exeter River.

And there's still an illicit thrill in the words snow day, even all the way from Florida.

"How many inches?" you ask greedily, hoping for the most.

Remainders

... a woman with a heavy bundle slunk into the shop. But she had scarcely entered, when another woman, similarly laden, came in too ... 

     "Very well, then!" cried the woman. "Who's the worse for the loss of a few things like these? Not a dead man, I suppose? ... Open that bundle, old Joe, and let me know the value of it.  ... I'm not afraid to be the first, nor afraid for them to see it.  We knew pretty well that we were helping ourselves, before we met here, I believe. It's no sin.  Open the bundle, Joe." ...

     "What do you call this? ... Bed-curtains? ... You don't mean to say you took them down, rings and all, with him lying there?" said Joe.

     "Yes I do," replied the woman. "Why not?"

     "You were born to make your fortune," said Joe, "and you'll certainly do it."

                               --Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Stave Four

In a Florida neighborhood, a vast mound of belongings on the side of the road usually means eviction--a sad enough circumstance.

Very rarely, it means that someone has died, which is crushingly sad. This happened on our street, where a pile of belongings began slowly accumulating in front of the house on the corner. There, a brother had been caring for his cancer-stricken sister, who had occupied two rooms of the house and, her son said, had filled them as only an eBay addict and hoarder can do.

Day after day, new objects and mysteries were brought out to join the growing mass on the curb.

A file cabinet, its drawers fastened shut with duct tape as if to protect its contents; a perfectly serviceable chest of drawers with brass handles; endless black garbage bags stuffed with clothing; a spangled black dress-up purse; wooden shelving; a New York Daily News Michael Jackson memorial issue, along with thirty years of other newspapers deemed worthy of preservation; empty boxes of Quaker chocolate-chip granola bars; a Santa doll, bottoms up, atop the heap; the mingled odor of floral dryer sheets and Vicks VapoRub; old prescription bottles; three TV monitors and an Xbox, for passing the time away; tassled decorative cushions in Oriental-carpet fabric; rolls of stained red-shag carpeting; a mattress or two, in equally poor repair; copies of For Love of the Game and How to Make Money with Gold Coins; somehow, a full-size refrigerator; a single-size headboard with a mirror that must have overseen the last days of this woman's life. A lone ceramic angel stood guard at the head of the line of trash, wielding an empty candlestick.

Who's the worse for the loss of all this? All of it meant something to its owner and, if only for that reason, deserves peace and respect.

But whenever there is a heap of stuff like this, it becomes clear to human scavengers that someone means for it to be gone, and quickly put out of sight. They soon appear, to remove, first, items that contain salable metal, silver or copper; next, usable furniture; then, goods of progressively lesser value.  Until rain and wind finish the job by eroding the rest, and the remaining pile is scooped up by the county or Waste Management.

In a chilling moment reminiscent of the ragpickers' scene from A Christmas Carol, a pair of large women pull up in their sedan to sort through what is left of this other woman's life, as her dogs bark impotently inside the house. One of the women sits down in the midst of the heap, the better to appraise its contents. The other bends double like a migrant worker, picking and discarding, for over an hour. Even a package of Peeps that must have been decades old disappears into their trunk. I was tempted to remark in passing, "She died of ebola, you know," if only to see them shriek and scatter like startled vultures.

I wasn't bold enough.

Reentry

I have had a snowbird experience.

Usually this phenomenon takes place over the roughly three months of a Florida summer, but in my case it happened over the three fall months during which we were traveling through Europe, Thailand, and Bali, in a great, post-retirement blowout of a trip.

Returning from the delights of Prague and Amsterdam, the ice-blue weirdness of Iceland, and the disco-ball mania of Kuta, Bali, and Pattaya Beach, Thailand, to the Gulf Coast of Florida is both culture shock and comfort.

When we first pulled into the driveway, our yard looked somehow diminished, like a childhood home that isn't as grand or as spacious as you'd remembered. (A week later, it has improved a great deal.)

I have forgotten the names of every other neighbor, but not of their dogs. I have to ask their neighbors what their names are, lest I be shamed. "Oh, that's okay," they tell me. "They've probably forgotten yours by now and think you're just a snowbird."

Really, though, not a lot changes during three months in Port Charlotte.

Any "For Sale" signs that have come down have been replaced by others sprouting up on different properties.

One barn of a place around the corner--a concrete edifice with its interior still one vast hall undivided by rooms--is under such painfully slow construction that its owners accomplish only one perceptible change per year.  Last year, it was windows. This year, instead of a large board, there is an honest-to-God double door. It is held in place by what look like giant black staples. Perhaps real hinges will appear next year.

Half the neighbors wave "how are ya" as if I haven't been gone. Others accost me with, "We didn't know what happened to you! We didn't see you any more!"  Then, more darkly, "And you never do know, do you?"

"No, you never do!" I reply. "And by the way, has anybody died or become critically impaired since we've been gone?"

Others had more faith. "We thought you were probably okay because your articles were still showing up in the paper."

Little did they know. I could have been taken into white slavery in Denpasar. I had banked a dozen articles to fill the deadlines when I was gone, and no one would have been the wiser.

And a few things exhibit shocking change when you are gone that long.

A dozen new restaurants have opened their doors--which may well be closed by this time next year.

Shorn of the dense shrubbery that had always hid it from view, one house has become so unrecognizable that I thought it had been torn down and replaced, whole. It seems bigger and farther forward on its lot without all those bushes pushing it into the background. They say that its ceiling is caving in and its floors have rotted. And suddenly it stands exposed to view like an embarrassed elderly hospital patient whose johnny won't fasten.

The dogs' old nemesis, a fat grey squirrel, still taunts them by climbing atop the pool cage and frisking his tail. But now he has gone too far and peed down on their heads as they barked.

"Roly, I can't believe he did that!"

"No, Doxie, it's true. This is his stinky squirrel piss all right."

Many neighbors no longer wave when they pass me in their cars. They are no doubt new and don't know me yet, but they will before long.