Why Washington needs more snowstorms
The Column: 01.07.22
It’s always satisfying to see our nation’s capital hit by a good hard snowstorm and imagine powerful men trying to shovel their way out of a snowbank. It’s a parable right out of Scripture, Let the powerful have a sense of humor for each in turn shall be made helpless.
It was front-page in the papers and the subhead said that a U.S. senator had been stranded overnight on the interstate. The blockage of an interstate is the true measure of a serious storm and the headline writer tossed in the senator as further evidence, but it only made me wish there had been numerous senators — say, those from Florida, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, the five states least accomplished at snow motorism, and if the Senate had come to session the next morning, our nation would get moving again, one blockage breaking a logjam. But it was only a Democrat from Virginia, giving Mitch McConnell a one-vote edge, and there is no vacancy on the Supreme Court, so he didn’t need it.
But I have no right to be smug about Washington, you’re right. My wife took away my car keys a couple years ago when I mentioned casually while driving that I have double vision and so my old Minnesota highway skills have atrophied. I sit in the shotgun seat and am astonished at her adeptness in traffic, her unhesitant merging, her acceleration upon seeing the light turn yellow, her masterful (or mistressful) parallel parking. When I met her, she was 35, living in Manhattan, hadn’t ever owned a car, and maybe she married me for transportation and now I admire her driving. She is a whiz: her training as a violinist, paying close attention to the score while also watching an untrustworthy conductor and listening to your section, has served her well as a motorist. Plus, she swears better than I ever could. Growing up evangelical, I swear like a kindergarten teacher. And “gosh” is not useful in reacting to treacherous stupidity, not in the Senate, not on the road.
We’ve spent the pandemic mostly in New York where a car is not the necessity it was back on the farm in Freeport, Minnesota, where I had a long narrow driveway to navigate at 5 a.m. when I left for work at the radio station, and after a heavy snowfall, I felt like Admiral Peary in search of the North Pole. Now, in New York, retired, snow rarely encountered, nothing to do but make coffee and glance at the paper, I’ve been reduced from admiral to a deckhand, and I’m okay with that. I feel no diminution of my manhood whatsoever.
On second thought, I do miss the sense of superiority, cruising through a blizzard along Highway 12, seeing a car in the ditch, and the absolute superiority when I stopped to help a ditched driver with his thumb out. Jesus left that out of the Good Samaritan story, the unseemly pleasure of assisting the helpless. The poor shivering man climbed into my big warm car and — remember, this was before cellphones — I drove him to the next town where he could call for a tow truck, and the gratitude of the poor wretch was satisfying to me, the Man Who Knows How To Drive On Snow, and once a wretch offered me cash, he was a city fellow, unaccustomed to Christian charity, and I said, “No, no, no. My pleasure.” Which it was. A rather smug pleasure.
It’s hard to combat smugness, you just have to grow out of it. I’m at a point in life when people my age are going into assisted living, memory units, the nuthouse, loony bin, call it what you like. As for me, I’m fine. I have a very close relationship with my cardiologist. When you’ve gotten a defibrillator installed in your chest by another man, it’s more than a casual friendship. The other day, he called in a medical technician to make an adjustment to the device and a tall child who appeared to be about fifteen walked in with an iPad and started tapping on the Pad. It is a sobering experience to have a teenager tinkering with your heart on an iPad as if I were a video game. One mistake and the defibrillator might defunctionalize me. What made it worse was his black T-shirt. I assumed health care people wear white or pale blue.
A boy with a plaything held my life in his hands. There is no smugness after this. I’m living on the edge. It’s not the end of the world but I can see it from here. Another three hundred serious snowstorms and the Senate might discuss climate matters.
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This Saturday we are featuring a show from January 8, 2011 broadcast from the tundra of the north. Our featured guests did their best to warm up the Fitzgerald: Nellie McKay and a four fiddle extravaganza with Deena and Sedra Bistodeau, Catie Jo Pidel, and Richard Kriehn. Check out our Facebook page at 5pm CT this Saturday or if you can’t wait, listen via this LINK.
We are lucky indeed that these seemingly teen healthcare providers know precisely which buttons to push to keep our engines running, and which pills we must take to jumpstart us on these colder days. Take your homeland for example this morning....brrrr. We are well below zero up here this morning. Years ago my old second-hand straight up 51 Ford coupe would have slept outside alone, shivering as engines must. We crossed our fingers, said a prayer, and were careful not to flood the engine. We then flicked the ignition key for just a few seconds, and Lord be praised, broom-broom went the engine...and me on my way to class.
On those snowy days we often stopped to help push some poor driver out of a snowdrift. Given our Adonis statures back then, we didn't throw our back out helping someone. We called it a Spiritual Work of Mercy in our church, and it made a guy feel good about serving those in need. Today, like you, I am only a few steps short of those senior facilities you cite, safe for a bit longer because my strong and smart wife shovels our driveway, and later reminds me of what tasks I'm still able to do. More I could not ask.
All this "age of discontent" aside up here on the tundra, unlike you, GK, I do wish we were back on that gulfside sandy Florida beach sucking up the warm sunshine (and lathered with the 3 digit SPF lotions my dear spouse provides me). I am now reading a good book written by a witty Irishman. I wish I were in that recliner on that warming sand, reading and watching the dolphins play. I am told they too are quite smart. Stay warm.
Your column is like the dawn after a great snow storm when the storm moves on to leave clear cold skies. The breaking of that dawn with a star filled sky in the west. Frost on the windows from a drop in temperature. Followed by a feeling of renewed hope and wonder for the new day. As for the Senate discussing how to address climate change, there would have to be three thousand great snow storms with snow tornadoes and glaciers before such a session would happen.