Oh Snow She Didn't!

So if we’ve no place to go, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.
-Sammy Cahn

I have nothing against snow really, as long as I don’t have to actually leave the house when it happens. A snowy day, when I have nowhere to go and food in the house, is delightful. Add a cup of hot cocoa and a nice warm afghan to the scenario, and I couldn’t be happier with a wintry day.

Unfortunately, it has almost never worked out this way for me. When I have had to venture out in it, the sad fact is that snow has not been my friend. My misadventures in the snow have been so numerous and spectacular that I am not sure that they will all fit into one blog, but I’ll give you the short versions of a few of the stories.

There was my first trip to New York City, which was also my first plane trip. I was out of college a few years, and I decided to visit one of my college roommates who was living in Brooklyn and working in Manhattan for a long weekend. We were walking the 16 city blocks from the Empire State Building (our first sightseeing stop) to the United Nations when the blizzard hit. Undaunted, we continued to the U.N. which was closed because of weather when we got there.

At that point, Midge and I gave up and spent the rest of the weekend having a very nice visit in Brooklyn. In the end there were 26 inches of show, a blizzard the likes of which the city hadn’t seen since 1946. Snow drifts completely buried some cars. The regular cabs weren’t running to Newark Airport – I ended up getting lost by myself in the New York Subway system and being delayed a day. Hey, at least I wasn’t driving.

I was driving one snowy day when I was about 9 months pregnant and my water broke at work. The people at the hospital seemed to think that it was important that I get there just as soon as possible. There were no cell phones then, and I was unable to contact my then-husband who was out making deliveries for his company. I drove myself the 30 miles to the hospital in the snow to have the baby.

There was the time that a co-worker and I drove to Erie on March 21st one year for a day trip to tour a state-of-the-art facility there. At lunch, it began to snow. Our hosts assured us that it was just a “little lake effect snow"- nothing to worry about. After seeing 12 cars off the side of the road in a 12-mile stretch on our way home on 79, we stopped at a little motel in Sandy Lake, PA. There were no phones in the rooms, and we only had the clothes on our backs, but there was a restaurant across the road serving all the homemade ham-and-cabbage you could eat for $3.50 and for that one low price they threw in dessert and a beverage. That made up for a lot of the inconvenience.

But the worst snow event for me, hands down, was when I was working for a quasi-military centuries-old religious organization with a social service mission, in a position that involved driving sometimes fours day a week throughout the western part of the state. I started the job at the onset of one of the worst winters in that decade, and I had already spent countless hours driving the company car over some absolutely miserable roads. I thought perhaps God was testing me, and when I survived that first winter, I had finally proved myself to be worthy of doing His work.

However, they weren’t done with me yet. The next winter they sent me and most of my co-workers in the Development Department to a regional conference at a center they owned and operated in New Jersey. It started to precipitate just as two co-workers and I headed out for NJ, where we should have arrived by about 11 p.m. I say “precipitate” because it wasn’t just snow. Actually, the snow was alternating with sleet, hail, and ice storms. It was not fun, but I went slowly and by 11 p.m. we had reached Carlisle, PA, about halfway to our destination. We spent the night there.

When we set out the next morning the weather had not improved at all. Several hours later we reached the town where the conference was being held. We were pretty excited and then we blew a tire, just a mile or two from our destination.

When we left for home a day or two later, the weather was even worse than it had been coming out. This time, though, the sleet and ice were coming down so quickly that the car’s defrosting system couldn’t keep up. For much of the trip, we had to pull over every few miles and chip away the ice from the windshield. It was fifteen hours later when we finally arrived in Pittsburgh, and I had driven the entire way.

I could go on but you get the idea. So, trust me when I tell you that it is not that I can’t drive in the snow. Oh, yes, I can, and I have. I just don’t want to – ever again, if I can help it. Can you blame me? When I hear a forecast for snow, I experience something akin to Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. I’ve stopped planning trips between November and March. I’ve accepted jobs specifically because they allowed me to minimize my commute.

And I keep the house stocked with hot cocoa and food in the winter.