So I guess this monster storm explains why the grocery store was such a mad house last night. I had no idea this was coming until a weather app sent a storm warning around midnight, and even that did not make much of an impression on me. The only clue I could have noticed was one car with its windshield wipers made erect, in the antlers position. But that was on Monday. I guess that was a long-term parker who knew to plan ahead.
It was funny to notice that the Spam and potted meat products were completely sold out at the store last night. I guess you go for the necessities at times like this.
The only place opened seems to be this, the ghetto coffee shop. Libraries are closed, the thrift shop I visit almost every day is not open, even my doctor seems to have taken the day off.
Standing outside my apartment building I noticed the small army of lonely figures shoveling snow. They looked elegiac, devoted in their duty to make the sidewalks safe for passage so that intrepid pedestrians such as myself can get past, and also so they don’t get a citation.
I have never shoveled snow. The last thing I remember shoveling was dirt onto the coffin of a deceased friend. That was unexpected, and thus I think it made more of an impact on me than it otherwise would have. When it comes to shovels and hoes and related tools of the earth I am not seasoned. It is possible I have never even held a hoe, though I have foggy memories of doing stuff in my mother’s short-lived garden. I never dug a ditch, but I read with interest that Thomas Edison spent some period of his life doing just that, and that he never spoke of it. He was evidently ashamed of the experience, partly because of the ignominious work itself but also (it was thought) on account of his fellow ditch diggers being mostly black.
I can’t remember for certain if that was Thomas Edison about whom that was written or some other notable American from that era, like Sousa. I might be confusing Edison for Hitler, who I seem to remember from what little I read from the Toland biography as having had a stint as a ditch digger in his youth.
I associate ditch digging with prisoners. Prisoners were commonly seen along Interstates and highways in Florida, wearing bright orange jumpsuits and toiling in the shadows of signs informing the drive-by public that these are prisoners on temporary work release.
Ditches themselves, once dug, were something akin to sewers. There was a ditch in my grade school playground, lying between the far end of the baseball field and a row of houses. A fence separated the houses from the school.
That was the ditch where I, in one of the great triumphs of my youth, found 4 or 5 bottles of beer, all unopened. I brought the bottles back to the other kids in the class, feeling like a great hunter who had captured a mighty and formidable prey.
No one had a bottle opener but one kid knew from watching his dad how to open a bottle of beer with his bare hand.
We drank. We were in the 8th grade, nearing the end of our time at that school before most of us would move on to Jesuit High School. None of us could have drank more than even a half a bottle of the hot beer, but we exaggeratedly stumbled around like winos, like we’d just done shots of whiskey and not watered down swigs of Budweiser.
Back in the classroom the mood was of thieves keeping a secret. No mention of this was ever made, as far as I know, but those who showed any concern for appearing to be intoxicated were smugly dismissed by the kids whose parents were alcoholics. Nobody gets drunk on that little alcohol, was the sentiment that shot down the bloated sense of concern over what we had done.
…
The elegiac figures who were shoveling snow earlier all stopped to watch as a USPS truck tried to get out of a snow bank. It seemed like a necessary thing to watch, though there was nothing anyone seemed able or willing to do to help the driver out. I guess the best anyone could offer would be to shovel some of the snow from under the truck? Nobody did anything but stand and stare, as if this ritual of watching was a mandatory form of bonding.
There are a number of people on my block who I only ever see on days like this. It reminds me how every door to every house is a passage to mystery. There is a particularly enormous man who lives in a house a few numbers down — I say “down” even though the numbers actually increase, because the houses are south of me. Up, down, it’s a subtle trick we play at times to elevate ourselves or others. At my first corporate job a boss frequently talked about sending paperwork to “the people upstairs” even though the people he was talking about were actually downstairs and he knew it. The bosses are who he was referring to. The people up from us on the org charts had stuff sent up to them no matter where on earth they were.
I think the last time I saw the incredibly enormous man was after a big storm, like this one. I have seen him less than a dozen times but he always looks the same: wearing nothing but shorts and stepping around with great caution, as if the floor could collapse under him. His belly lurches over his belt like a giant tongue stuck from an outsized mouth. It looks like he stuffed a bowling ball inside himself. I get a sense from his appearance that he rarely leaves the house.
My mother once lamented that the holidays created something of a depressing spectacle. So many people out Christmas shopping at the malls never came out at any other time of the year. Shut-ins, perhaps, but mother seemed to imply that they were some sort of victims of society, people whose lives were lonely enough that they were never seen tending to everyday social customs but who felt forced to present themselves to society as a part of the holiday ritual.
I had to admit, having never thought of it, the crowds at the malls did look quite a bit more unkempt around the holidays, with a certain air of novelty about the peoples’ experiences navigating the distinct complexities and distractions of the holiday shopping environment.
…
There are no books here, but I have hundreds of e-books on this tablet. I opened one at random, and found an amiable discussion of duck hunting as some kind of metaphor for religion. An interesting point made by the author was his belief that the Bible was not a legal document but rather it is a letter from God. I seem to remember hearing a priest make a point similar to that, though I cannot remember which approach he favored, that of the Bible as a legal treatise for life or a document of love from our Creator.
The book is Good Call, by Jase Robertson. It is not obvious to me how pages are numbered in the e-book reader I use, so I just landed on any random page, forgoing the 61/181/207 ritual for once.
Going back home, I think. Debating whether to make tonight a first without booze. I really did enjoy the atmosphere at the big beer hall last night, but it might have just been a mood.
I’ve written the story of the beer bottles many times over, I think at the .MOBI and in offline ramblings.
I just saw reference to a person whose first name is “Heaven”.
