If I listened solely to my Tennessee friends, I'd be halfway convinced that the apocalypse is creeping slowly north, and that we're all destined to die in a snowy explosion, our frozen hands making flailing slapping motions at the old lady trying to wrangle the last jug of milk from the dairy cooler.
I called my mom last night, and she picked up the phone crying, which is usually not just bad news, but outright identity shattering, if recent history has taught me anything. "Is everything okay?" I prepared for anything.
"Yeah, just....just, are you safe?"
"Am I safe? Well," I looked around in my kitchen, where I'd been attending to some beef stew that had been simmering peacefully for three hours, "I mean, yeah."
Turns out, the drive from her job in downtown Knoxville to her house in South Knoxville took about two hours to make because of the icy snow that started at noon and continued into the evening. This is a drive that should have taken no more than fifteen minutes on good old Chapman Highway. I could understand anxiety, but the woman had been pushed to the crumbling edge of her sanity. I could also understand if I was actually living in or near Tennessee; however, I sat in two feet of snow myself in the great state of Vermont, one thousand very long, very safe miles away.
She shakily relayed her tale of the drive home, the deadlock in front of the Kroger on Chapman Highway, the cars gnarled up like pretzels on the side of the road, the usually decent people of the town gnawing at the fleshy calf muscles of the weak or sick. "I don't know if they're going to make us go in tomorrow. It's so snowy, you can't even drive on it. I guess it's about at two inches now. How much do you have?" I told her. "Oh my God," she said, "oh my God. Well, has it kept you from anything? Did they call off your work, or what happened?"
"I think they're pretty used to dealing with it up here," I said, "and if they called off work or school for every day where over five inches of snow fell, the town would have to shut down until about late March." She was quiet. "But that's just a conservative estimate, I guess. Maybe mid-April."
When I talked to Will D. later, he told me that the clinic he was rotating through in Rogersville had closed its doors at four in the afternoon to the great disgust of the patients needing care. "I guess it was just too snowy for us to say," he said, "and goddamn, there is nothing on the shelves at Wal-Mart right now, you should see this!"
I don't want to be one of those smarmy people that says "Guys, get it together, it's just snow!" but apparently I am, since I used that very phrase more than once tonight. I remember what it was like driving in Tennessee during snow days, and it was quite the harrowing experience, but as someone who's now schlepped to work in fresh powder, smacked a blizzard in it's snow-face at 3 in the morning, and dug my car out from under almost 3 feet (all within the same two-week span), I can't help but want to scoff a little (just a little). And do you want to know what I blame for my new smugness?
Snow tires.
The day I put snow tires on my car is the day I lost my snow-complaining privileges in the world at large. I don't even have the good, studded kind - I have the regular cross-your-fingers kind. But when you have them, you have them, and that's it. "God, can you believe it? I couldn't even see the road this morning, I saw three dead, frozen people." "You got your snows?" "Yeah." "Oh, well, you're fine then."
But I suppose if you live in a place where you need snow tires, you lose the privilege to complain about snow tires. Where does this end? When can I complain again?!
In fact, today I have to go to Wal-Mart in Williston, as my olive oil has gone rancid and I have five dollars left on a gift card for there; somehow find a new headlight for my car; and return some stuff to various stores on Church Street. I'd ask Jesus to take the wheel, but he sees that I have snow tires, so he says I'll be fine.
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