To all of our fellow thawing, weather-weary sufferers in the
Rockies, Northeast, Upper Midwest and High Plains, Canada, Alaska, and, OK, for good measure let’s just throw in Greenland and all the ships at sea, still stuck out on White Rock Lake waiting for the Coast Guard icebreaker,
"Greetings from Dallas"
We realize it may have appeared somewhat insensitive not writing to inquire as to the wellbeing of others, during your own recent extended snowy turmoil.
However, in light of recent events I hope you can accept that, trapped in our homes by frigid
hyperbole down here, there were concerns about first vetting, through appropriate channels, the
legality, and yes even the
legitimacy, of using our own personal private emails for that, being our only internet access available at the time.
Since today is Thursday, you might assume we are only now getting this time to communicate, because, like you, we have just made it past the traditional Wednesday Humpday. However, at the beginning of March, here in Texas, one of those may now have to be qualified with an asterisk.
If nothing else, our DFW area has done it's share of bragging about
relocations. Now there is growing sentiment to
relocate at least one of our
52 allocated Humpdays from a Wednesday to the
second Sunday of every March, coincidental with the annual switchover to
Daylight Saving Time.
Thereby comemmorating the hump of all humps transcended this past Sunday March 8, when, we are convinced, through the grace of providence, and the still underappreciated benefits of fossil fuel-induced global warming, DST delivered us from an inevitable near Donner Party experience, by symbolically heralding the end of our recent, borderline apocalyptic, two week, winter precipatatory nightmare, which I will attempt to relate in all its horror.
For now, let us just indicate, as the centerpiece of an annual March Hump-week, the newly designated Texas Humpday has become our 5th official State Holiday, along with:
Confederate Heroes Day (Robert E. Lee’s birthday) -- Jan. 19
Texas Independence Day – March 2
The date 59 of our forebears signed the Texas Declaration of Independence (from Mexico – not from the United States, as has been periodically proposed here since; no matter how much unrequested enthusiastic concurrence we receive for that from others around the nation).
San Jacinto Day -- April 21
Remembering the eponymous battle essentially sealing that deal, a month and a half later, when, shouting “Remember the Alamo,” 800 of them defeated Santa Anna’s much larger Mexican force.
and
Emancipation Day (aka “Juneteenth) -- June 19th.The day Texas slaves finally learned they had been freed, 5 months after Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation -- we suspect, in large part, due to our Confederate Heroes Day honorees' ability to stay on message.
Yes, yes we know, up in your necks of the woods, the annual mythical determinant of the de facto end of winter will probably remain Groundhog Day, February 2. But, as we understand that to be a pagan celebration – unless, of course, you’d be willing to throw in a Lazarus or two, we are content to wait the additional 35-42 days (36-43 if we stumble over a Leap Year) until the clocks are turned an hour forward around 2 a.m.
As you no doubt may have heard, because it was in all the papers, the weather system coming in across the Rockies from California blanketed our entire region with as much as three-and-a-half to four inches of powdery snow (clearly the most formidable kind, to our thinking). Although, truth be told, taken by itself, and representing only half of an unforgiving Mother Nature's onslaught, that snowcover did little more than provide ample opportunity to ooh and aah out the window, and attempt assembly of some of the sorriest tiny snow figures anyone is likely to ever encounter.
Yet, witness the more than 10,000 of us -- by invitation, no less -- inundating our local TV stations with digital smartphone evidence of snow-covered patio furniture, snow-obscurred street signs, assorted enveloped lawn ornaments, and prematurely planted spring daffodil and pansy beds that, miracuously, now seem to have escaped unscathed, unlike in previous winters.
Not to mention an equal number of not quite archival shots, documenting dogs frolicking in it, children frolicking in it, and adults big enough to know better, unimpressively attempting to sled down inclines aboard transportation more akin to plus-sized Frisbees than the classic wooden Flexible Flyers and Downhill Racers. The latter most likely now too heavy to be delivered fully assembled from China, absent onerous additional shipping and handling tariffs -- unless one were to achieve that magical Amazon purchase threshhold.
At the professional photo-journalism level, we were also treated to graphic depiction of ominous weather patterns and snowfall accumulation, varying as much as an inch-and-a-half between about two dozen adjacent and proximate communities, with just as many left unacknowledge on weather screens, due to the time constraints of trying to squeeze in as many frolicking dog and kid photos as possible.
Then we had the army of invariably nubile field reporters, layered in bulky sweaters and downy parkas -- in Dallas, sometimes also a form of poor woman's augmentation. The mission, invariably was to demonstrate the virtual impossibility of fashioning a snowball out of the wispy particulate matter; and yet, nonetheless attempting to throw same toward the camera or other station personnel, pre-programed to feign either delight or whimsical terror.
Last but not least, there were seasoned journalists pressed into service, sallying forth to point out, and thereby notarize, areas in the background where the last vestiges of accumulated snow may have remained. In the absence of that, apparently instructed to sieze upon alternate opportunities to elevate the pedestrian into the photographable. To paraphrase Churchill, rarely have so many owed so little to so many at the Weather Channel.
By week two, running out of banter, the news teams were even resorting to the old adapted Mark Twain bromide, "If you don't like the [insert name of virtually any state or region] weather, wait a few minutes." Others reminded viewers of that other Twain observation that "Everybody complains about the wealther, but nobody does anything about it." --which, unless Mr. Clemens also used the pen name Charles Dudley Warner, the friend whose comment Twain actually was only passing along, persists as one of the most popular misattributed quotes of all time, thanks to TV weathercasters.
Mais non, mes amis, that wasn’t what branded the past two weeks with benchmarks we haven’t experienced in at least four years, but certainly hope to cite liberally in future comparative references.
Our initial and subsequent principal concern -- on not one, but
two, occasions,
precisely a week apart -- was the potential menace of what I estimate to have been up to an
eighth-of-an-inch, let me repeat that, an eighth-of-an-inch, of
crippling subglacial ice, coating our thoroughfares, byways and pool decks. Thereby bringing life as we knew it to a near grinding halt, and trapping children as young as two or three indoors, watching the movie
"Frozen" again and again, until neighbors were forced to summon
Child Protective Services.
We know there had been at least two fast moving systems, Sparta and Thor, because – hey wait, when did they start such macho masculinity naming of winter storms? I think I did get the memo, but until now had forgotten all about it. Or as we are alleged to say down here, had “plumb forgotten.” In any case, I’d defy any major metropolitan area to sustain this kind of one-two knockout punch, without at least a little whining. So please know, as we struggled through this ordeal, your thoughts and prayers have been deeply appreciated.
The flurry mongering became so omnipresent that people forgot they almost hadn’t heard any other actual news in more than a week. However several breaking, weather-related, stories do stand out.
So many semi-tractor trailers had difficulty gaining traction on a slippery section of highway I-30 (pronounced "ah-thudy" not too far down the road apiece), several strongly considered changing their names during the current presidential nomination maneuvering to Donald Trump.
The road ahead of those vehicles was a sea of white, as pure as the driven snow, ironically because, until the next pass of a sand truck, they remained undriven. And yet, that stasis seemed like progress, when contrasted against lesser vehicles, slipping and sliding backward down the on and offramps of the impossibly steep, LBJ Freeway/North Central Expressway "High Five" interchange. Beating on, boats against the current, bourne back ceaselessly into the guardrails, while the Eckleburg eyes of viewers at home pondered, as they do, just about every winter, "What were they thinking?"
Sorry, got a little carried away there; but then, there was also the added ignominy of all of this chaos occurring, as it did, during the transition from February to March, putting a real damper on Ford Truck Month.
On Harry Hines Boulevard a number of cars spun out of control striking a couple of poles. The Poles, recent immigrants, 32 year old Stanislaus Pulaski and his wife 29 year old Franciszka, had been misled into believing that, in our Lone Star State, the Presidents Day mattress sale down there in the design district, continued uninterrupted straight through the, previously cited, March 2 Texas Independence Day festivities. An easy misunderstanding accepted by local authorities, once the couple's papers had been verified, and it was determined potential emergency room treatment at Parkland would unlikely result in any unacceptable drain on the economy.
If the great Pat McCormick were alive today, he would note it was so cold in the Gentlemen's Club stretch of Northwest Highway there was a guy out on the corner selling thermal bras to hookers, and the flashers in trench coats were satisfied with just describing themselves. Pickpockets did the best they could wearing two sets of mittens. Bartenders kept their eyes glued to the thermometer, having been instructed to seriously consider no longer watering the drinks once the temperature dropped to -173 degrees Fahrenheit.
At one point things got so dicey, just to keep people off the roads, officials issued a temporary ban on drive-by shootings in Pleasant Grove . Now with the worst likely behind us, thanks to the grace of providence, and the widely held belief that the actual benefits of global warming have been seriously underreported by mainstream media, we are told that ban had been scheduled to be lifted at 6:00 p.m. Saturday evening.
However, at the height of the crisis, the foreboding TV weather warnings continued at such an accelerating rate, they caused a number of our open carry advocates to immediately haul out weapons and ammo, apparently citing their understanding of the state’s unofficial motto that “To be forewarned is not sufficient with which to be forearmed.”
As events transpired, more than 1,000 DFW Airport flights had to be delayed or cancelled, although there were differences in opinion as to whether the cancellations, had been merely proactive, preventive or prophylactic – the latter being the least consistent with our state’s abstinence only airspace policy during these kinds of weather conditions.
In the nation's capital, Alabama Rep. Martha Roby opined the airport shutdowns and flight cancellations might provide an opportune window to defund all of Homeland Security, not just the "immigration" portions in the bill she introduced in the House.
In Fort Worth, downtown exterior escalators were shut down as a precaution, although it begs the question how lazy or incapacitated one has to be to get stuck on an escalator – particularly a “down” escalator. With several traffic signals out of commission, confusion reigned at certain crosswalks, where pedestrians pondered whether to mosey, or as we like to put it "Stand their ground."
The 54 foot continuous flow exterior escalator between upper floors of Dallas’ Perot Museum of Science and Nature, being fully glass enclosed was unaffected, although several riders claimed to have heard what they described as a giant sucking sound.
Just to the West of Fort Worth in Azel, a Chiropodist was said to have abandoned his Kia in a two-foot snow drift on Spur 344 and walked to a drive-thru beer barn.
Much of the mini-glacial intrusion would rapidly evaporate in afternoon temperatures skyrocketing into the 40s and 50s. Nevertheless, our TV news teams were fortunate that, in several instances, enough managed to remain as a
slushy “winter mix." While fully negotiable in itself, this augured well for the possibility of
refreezing in place that evening, into what would be described as a cobblestone ice pattern. This, in turn, presented the dire possibility of turning the following morning’s commute into not quite the living hell their northern and east coast counterparts were blessed with, but at least enough to call to our attention.
Even after it truly wasn’t.
Full disclosure, anyone who has ever purchased a defrosted chicken, and then refrozen the bird again before eventually cooking, knows how deadly this kind of sequence can turn. And for God’s sake, at least two or three times, overnight readings did, in fact, plummet to freezing -- 32 degrees Fahrenheit, to be precise (plus or minus a 3-point margin of error, to be a little less precise).
We should interject here that while two weeks of occasional flurries and intermittent slippery ice may not seem like a lot to you folks up north; you'll have to understand that’s a week and a day longer that we learn in our textbooks, it took to create the entire world, 6,000 years ago (again, I believe, with a + or – 3 point margin of error).
You should also try to comprehend the fear of devastation a terrestrial maelstrom of this magnitude would generate in these climes. Visualize if you will, traffic stalled for as much as an hour on icy overpasses and highway inclines visited at least three or four times a day by camera crews. A perfect, if otherwise inconsequential, storm, that nonetheless met expectations in also putting a debilitating crimp in both commerce and social interaction, whilst simultaneously rendering virtually any learning whatsoever, grades K-12, into only a distant memory. That, over the course of three entire days—two of them back to back, we might add.
In fact, in between, we had to cope with the other snowshoe dropping in the form of the additional gratuitous two-hour delay for the start of school on day four, after the worst was not only over but quite visibly absent. Oh the humanity!
During the prolonged exile, some of the older students had all but forgotten the names of their teachers - were it not for the fact that, down here, most of their names are all pretty much, “coach.”
Middle schoolers at
Westwood Jr. High are now, once again, being encouraged to remove from their bedroom windows those
“Keep Cold and Flurry On” posters that have been selling like cold cakes these past several weeks.
For a while there, we were saddled with the Hobson’s choice of trusting our lying eyes looking out the window, as well as the relatively sure footing -- or continuing to heed the ongoing advisories from TV news teams, not so nimble in springing out of action, as into it.
As far as all were concerned, until further notice, our North Texas roads remained treacherous – the level of treachery rising to as much as 20% higher than we are accustomed to, sitting three to a pickup seat, while calling or texting and driving in less inclement weather.
Sure, the no school precaution may have been justified, because, as I like to say, "the children are our future"– especially after they put us in the rest home. But at its height, our snow flurry emergency had many more of our citizenry in a dither – not to mention several in ditches off to the side of the road.
I am, of course, referring to those foolhardy souls who repeatedly – or frankly even once, but repeatedly sounds so much more reckless – ignored warnings and advisories not to venture out into the white unknown in their vehicles, unless absolutely necessary, and then not until it became actually necessary. The difference between a winter weather warning and a winter weather advisory down here, is essentially dependent upon how much you really want to get out.
Even then not always choosing wisely.
Witness our good neighbor, let's call him
"Bob" Burns, across the
Tophill Lane cul-de-sac, who despite fully observing the
letter of the vehicular precaution, is only now recovering from the
hypothermia suffered in an otherwise inexplicable last minute dash on foot to the neighborhood Kroger Supermarket for
“party ice.” (Our homes at the dead end are all clustered at the very top of Tophill Lane -- approximately five inches in elevation above the bottom of Tophill Lane, a mile west -- hence the hazardous road condition during inclement weather on that steep incline.)
Bob later explained that he had considered purchasing at the arguably more proximate Walgreen Drug, but as that was located south of Beltline Rd. on the Dallas rather than Richardson side of Coit Rd. (which to some of us with more lascivious imaginations, still sounds like only half a word), Bob had therefore been uncertain as to whether or not there might be the additional, Dallas, five cent, litter reduction, charge for the plastic bag the ice already came in.
Nevertheless, the popular Spring Creek subdivision resident soon did have occasion to make an appearance at that very intersection, when rushed for triage to our equally iconic PrimaCare doc in a box, located one building over from the druggist, with ample free parking for both. The rescue party had found Bob and another of our cul-de-sac neighbors, whom we will identify as "Bruce" Culver, huddled together for warmth under the Big Lou’s Carwash exit blow dryer at the Corner of Beltline and Spring Creek Road.
It appears that, under unique circumstances, the Culver family had to forego the
license these storms provided the rest of us to combat the inevitable cabin fever, by binge watching the new third season of
House of Cards, delivered by
Netflix just in the nick of time.
Under the overcast sky, in the fluorescent glow of Big Lou’s inviting likeness on the electronic backlit billboard, Culver explained to authorities, how the family had fled their recently renovated media room in horror, during the five and a half hours Netflix remained stuck in its traditional buffering mode. The only TV reception they were apparently able to receive was standard cable, shamelessly interrupted every five or six minutes by truculent commercials from trial attorney Jim “the Hammer” Adler, trolling for opportune slip and fall tort prospects. Bruce had then been forced into his own Walgreen run for Xanax.
To be fair, Adler had already even filed suit against the state highway department, because icy road conditions had made it so difficult for the famed Houston litigator to actually chase ambulances. In fact, believing that he may still be preceived as not agressive enough, Adler has scheduled his next set of commercials to be shot in an octagon.
Also to be fair, Mr. Burns’ run for Kroger was undoubtedly a precautionary measure to escape the expected crowds stocking up on provisions such as home security systems and bottled water for the long haul – quarts, gallons, and I think I spotted at least one jeroboam, although everything’s bigger in Texas.
This despite the fact that all of our plumbing remained consistent and reliable throughout the entire ordeal.
What? Is there, a national CONTAINER SHORTAGE? If one must panic, why not just fill up your own pots and kettles, maybe even a bathtub, instead of forking over $1.29/gal. for that Ozarka sludge – and more if the beverage produces an occasional eurotropic-like bubble?
Even during a tornado, did you ever hear reports like, “All electric power is holding firm, but there are reports of several sinks and a toilet out of commission in Palo Pinto County?”
I mean, even if you just chipped a thin slice of ice off the front curb, the two days you might find some, you could still just heat it up for all the liquid one could possibly consume – and have plenty left over for the ficus in the foyer. And if all else fails, we still had fracking, that, in many cases, could have provided both water and fuel out of the very same tap.
People, people, in retrospect, some restraint, or at least informed decision-making, may also have been incumbent upon us. If you had to risk the elements to hoard anything, at least make it something like that old standby Ramen Noodles, with their open-ended shelf life, or a cheese log when expecting to hunker down with out-of-town guests for the duration.
On the way out, maybe snag an Us Weekly magazine at checkout, if only to remain current on the comings and goings of Jennifer Aniston, and stave off cabin fever, in the event the cable fails – as can surely be predicted with this type of hyper-chilly precipitation across an entire swath of North Texas? At least you would have the reassurance the former "Friends" star would be fully protected against the elements, regardless of weather conditions -- slathered with that Aveeno.
Or better, grab some even more pertinent reading from the always reliable National Enquirer on the well-documented space aliens that have been infiltrating our midst willy-nilly, while we remain distracted by the undocumented illegal variety, now, only sporadically filtering across the border into El Paso, Del Rio, Eagle Pass and Laredo – or Durant, if you throw in our northern border with Oklahoma.
You know, staunching those particular “boots on the ground” is still a hot topic of conversation among that set who get their news almost exclusively, from even more ostensibly reputable broadcast sources and talk show hosts. Boots sizes six-and-a-half and under, to narrow things down -- whose currently youthful wearers will soon be hauling in our substandard wage offerings, to underwrite the continued affordability of happy meals and sustain the delusion we could otherwise actually afford the correspondingly identified McMansions so coveted here'abouts.
Of course the above weren’t the
only hair raising
Jack Londonesque stories of hardship emanating from our tight little cul-de-sac (only introduced here again, because of how much fun it is just to
say “cul-de-sac”).
One house east of the Culver/Burns compound, the Wilguses were just thankful their massive aging hackberry in the front yard, held together by arboreal psrosthetics, had already fallen to the tree surgeons' saws. In it's end stages, that tree would have almost certainly succumbed to the weight of the ominous light dusting burdening its limbs. In fact, I believe there had been the neighborhood equivalent of an office pool on that.
Adjacent, anchoring the actual
cul of our sac, the
Siglers received a bit of a shock, as the result of an unexpected visit from Homeland Security. An edgy letter carrier had observed a cellphone conversation in which one of them had sought some sort of contact information for the Nigerian terrorist organization
Boko Haram.
The issue was resolved quickly enough after it turned out, Mrs. Sigler, in her Texas accent, had merely been ordering an Amazon CD of the British rock band Procol Harum. Inspired by the view out the living room window, the woman believed the group’s “Whiter Shade of Pale,” might serve as a perfect ethereal score to complement the achromatic winter fairyland -- or at least introduce a level of irony.
Between the Sigler manse and our own, the Reids suffered some water damage to one of the two Adirondack chairs, now neighborhood fixtures in their front yard. Gallantly, the Reids have vowed to “rebuild” whenever the "weather mess" came to a merciful end. (This was a direct purloined cartoon captioned quote, although not entirely in context.)
There were also numerous examples of our Texas resourcefulness and can-do spirit.
For example, our longtime friends the Zilmans, across the back alley, had witnessed, like the rest of us, the obligatory TV news footage of Boston homeowners snow-blowing a far more plethoric accumulation off of their sidewalks and driveways.
Some were shown even attempting to reclaim on-street parking spots. That generally proved a Sisyphusian undertaking, with the City of Boston Public Works Department replenishing the vacuum almost immediately with eight-to-ten foot ramparts plowed from the roadways themselves.
The backstory story may have been apocryphal, but rumors circulated that the above deck chair rearrangements had become even more essential, once so much of the accumulation had been dumped into Boston Harbor. This allegedly led to emotionally-spent
polar bears calling in from receding
Churchill, Manitoba ice flows, to inquire as to Beantown vacancies.
Realizing they had not prepared with similar dedicated equipment, the Zilmans determined the snowpack had been powdery enough to attempt removal with their leafblower. The leafblower, a gentleman named Jose, had been none too pleased at having been summoned for this off-label operation at four in the morning.
In the absence of the requested manual labor, Mr. Zilman remembered having seen on eBay that winter power equipment included not only snowblowers, but the even more powerful snowthrowers. It dawned on him that, not having immediate access to either, why not hit the garden shed and explore the possibility of another off-label use of a snow-mower. This proved a lot more feasable in concept than in practice; but Steve is contemplating a presentation on "Shark Tank" in the not too distant future.
As far as their own walks and driveways, in
frackable yet implacable nearby
Irving, Texas, the site of an unprecedented number of recent tremors, popularly attributed to the area's plethora of shale drilling operations, the residents generally concurred they could wait until the snowcover just
"quaked itself off."
Next door, Susan and David could be seen outside in animated discussion regarding potential frost damage to the cabbage, or kale, or whatever the hell it was they still had lingering in last summer’s raised vegetable beds. Susan wanted to mount a rescue effort, dig the plants up and at least allow them to recuperate a little in the garage. “You mean until we toss ‘em out?" David threw in gratuitously; before pointing out “Wait, isn’t cabbage what people down here actually plant on purpose in the winter, because it’s so hearty?”
Susan responded, “That would be the ornamental cabbage,” opining that the run of the mill plebian, edible variety might not be up to the job. “That’s what we have the Rio Grande Valley for,” adding as an afterthought, “and I think you meant ‘hardy,’ which, in either case, I still don’t believe ours is.”
Last time we checked in with them, after googling iceberg lettuce, the couple had agreed to garden center arbitration, down at the home improvement store; although how one was supposed to get all the way over there in this weather was an open question.
By this time, Mrs. Fay back on Tophill Lane was perplexed as to how, even though all the rest of the snow had melted, the now severely misshapen front lawn snow effigies were still hanging on? She strongly suspected that, in the dead of night, vandals may have targeted the neighborhood and laminated several of them as a prank.
Instead of waiting for somebody else to do something about this unforeseen problem, as an aesthetic contribution to the neighborhood, she voluntarily replaced each with one of the many Nutcracker Suite soldier nutcrackers the family had accumulated over many Christmases past.
But only as far down as Carriage Drive; after that, like it or not, the Pickrells would have to pick up the slack.
On the other side of us, longtime resident, let's call her Sally "C" spun stories of how the early Spring Creek residents had once held out for 13 days, heavily outnumbered by a larger force of Mexicans, and subsisting on only a Braum’s pie and iced cream concoction – until it was realized the Mexicans were merely yard workers going about their normal business.
Still from then on, whenever danger presented itself, the cry always rung out in our neighborhood, “Remember the à la mode!” Which is an awfully long trek in itself for a punchline.
As the omnipresent weather maps persistently reminded, down here in the Sun Belt, Mother Nature’s wrath wasn’t restricted to our Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. From Natchez to Mobile, from Memphis to St. Joe, wherever the four winds gusted – many of us even temporarily put away our knee pants. Something our mamas done told us was unprecedented on casual Fridays as Daylight Savings Time rapidly approached each year. One fellow in Shreveport was said to have turned blue in the night due to the relentless and unforgiving chill.
OK, granted, if you insist on parsing everything offered here, to get technical about it, daylight savings doesn’t actually approach more rapidly than any of the other less celebrated or labor intensive time periods. Except of course at the last minute, when it’s 7 a.m. instead of 6 and you just don’t know where the time went.
A problem, incidentally, not faced by residents of Russia-- or the former and present Russian part of the former Soviet Union to use the full name -- to go off here on a slight tangent, which, as you may know, is one of those traditional three-horse sleighs, so indispensable when it becomes otherwise hazardous to go up the icy steppes. This measure, oddly enough,was the result of one of the few actual “reforms” Vladimir Putin allowed sometime President Medvedev to put through during his wisp of place-holding tenure.
It’s true, you can look this up too. One autumn, not too long ago, Medvedev abolished any semi-annual clock changing whatsoever – either forward of back – thereby, a priori, locking Russia into Daylight Savings year-round from then on. Sly operative that he is, Putin apparently realized that allowing his protégé to monkey with the cosmos was a lot safer than letting the stand-in get his hands on something of consequence – like 5-Year Planning and Zoning. We try to be nothing if not educational
It is unclear whether this was simply to offer the proletariat the illusion of a perpetual extra hour of daylight in which to remain unable to obtain essential goods and services; or part of the widely-held former Soviet practice of keeping everyone in the dark. The short Russian winter days and long nights now have everyone heading off to work before sunrise and then returning home well after sunset. The result being their internal circadian clocks work even less accurately than the ones now being imported from Minsk.
The consensus, however, turns out to be none of the above; and that the whole clock and bull story had been crafted merely out of a desire to provide then Prime Minister Putin with more convenient access to the Sun’s warmth in which to keep his shirt off.
Of course here in Dallas, we still subscribe to the theory the extra hour of daylight helps the environment, saving on electricity, because we don’t need to turn on the lights as early. Even after we receive the monthly bill, we somehow neglect to deduce that, since daylight saving mostly encompasses our Texas
summers, the hour we gain in the evening consumes at least
5 times the air conditioning required by the one we’ve lost in the morning.
THE REST OF THE STORY
Admittedly unrequested background, this Texas correspondent felt confident of his family’s chances of negotiating the recent formidable weather conditions, having survived the great Boston blizzard of 1978.
If you hadn’t been there, you would possibly be unaware that, in addition to having been, until now, the Massachusetts winter storm of the century, it was also the one in which then Governor Michael Dukakis suffered what might be described as his first wardrobe malfunction prior to that unfortunate presidential election photo in the tank helmet.
This very good, good government Governor, who many truly insist may have actually been born in a tie and jacket, was rather unfairly ridiculed by certain media, for appearing over several days as an almost omnipresent, relatable comforting image, on camera in Boston TV studios, directing the recovery effort and relaying emergency announcements, while garbed in a number of tastefully selected wooly sweaters. The Gov. has always maintained that it wasn't an act...it was a sweater.
Laura Burke meeting her husband in Canton, MA., at a Route 128 high tech corridor bus stop. The only possible final leg of the commute home from Boston, during the Blizzard of ’78. Take our word for it that if we had somehow managed to locate the shot of Roger outbound in the a.m. on a second horse, briefcase incongruously in hand, you would be seeing that here instead.
By family consensus, this was less ridiculous than the botched preparation during a subsequent year's whiteout, with Laura's liberal interpretation of her husband's request to pick up a couple of
fifty pound bags of builders' sand at the hardware store to stash in the trunk of their Dodge Dart, for improved traction up the impossibly steep Beacon Street hill, where they were living at the time.
Having read somewhere that one could obtain the same amount of traction under icey conditions with "kitty litter," she had neglected to calculate precisely how many additional bags of same one would have had to purchase to equal the weight of two fifty pound bags of sand on the floor over, rather than under, the back wheels of the vehicle. [ Incidentally, although it may have never been officially explained on the Click and Clack, NPR "Cartalk" radio program, the correct pronunciation of Dodge Dart in Boston, is "Dawdge Daht," employing most of the right sounds, while still mangling them. As previously noted, we try to be as informative as possible here, when given the opportunity.]