Shades of 1967
Writing by treason on Saturday, 30 of December , 2006 at 12:44 pm
No, I’m not talking about the new Congress - I’m talking about my memories of Chicago’s Big Snow of ‘67. I was seven years old, snowdrifts were at 42 inches, the entire city had come to a standstill, and grocery store shelves were bare. Eeeeerie.
T often criticizes my habit of stockpiling as if I were preparing for a nuclear holocaust. I remember my family living on those refrigerated cans of biscuits because for some reason that was the only thing left in the stores. Years later, right before the start of my final year of college, I was trapped indoors again - this time with chicken pox. I had the misfortune of renting a little Victorian house that had a mini-refrigerator. As God is my witness, I will never live with a small refrigerator again.
I feel a bit of Miss Scarlett O’Hara coming on. As God is my witness, as God is my witness they’re not going to lick me. I’m going to live through this and when it’s all over, I’ll never be hungry again. No, nor any of my folk. Even if I have to stockpile MoonPies ’til the cows come home. As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again.
I used to think I developed the stockpiling habit from my mother, who survived the Great Depression and World War II; or maybe from my stepfather who had a never-ending supply of toiletries in his linen closet. Stacks of clean white towels, neat columns of Crest and new toothbrushes in every color, bottle after bottle of Prell shampoo, and an assortment of aspirin, powder, cotton swabs, soap, ointment, band-aids - you name it and it was in there. His mother used to preserve fruit from their garden, and jars were stashed in cupboards, closets, and in the garage. This was during the mid-seventies and the woman had been dead since 1969.
I spoke with my sister this morning, who’s trapped with her husband in a Holiday Inn Express here in town, and she said they had peanuts for dinner last night. I watched Alive yesterday on the History Channel - I don’t want to be in the position of filleting a friend with a piece of broken glass because I was unprepared.
T’s outside shoveling our historic snow off the driveway and creating a quintzee in the front yard. No, not the game - the snow cave. He’s been watching Survivorman , I Shouldn’t Be Alive, and Everest: Beyond the Limit and has been creating little survival kits. Between his inventions and my stash of MoonPies, leftover from Halloween, we won’t have to leave the house ’til the spring thaw.
And the snow continues to fall here in Albuquerque…
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