From Pine View Farm

Snobia 4

We did our regular weekly grocery shopping today. We put it off yesterday because Second Son came home for a visit.

Bad luck. Bad choice.

Snow was forecast (well, actually, it’s coming down at a pretty good clip as I type this–looks like a couple of inches on top of what’s left on the ice from last week’s storm–and I do mean ice) and no signs of stopping any time soon–the forecast is one to four inches, followed by freezing rain for about twelve hours (ouch! more ice).

The supermarket was mobbed.

Now, this is hardly a wilderness–unlike, say eastern Colorado, where houses may be miles apart and many miles from the nearest services.

There is hardly anyone in my neighborhood who lives more than a 15 -minute walk from at least a convenience store–maybe 20 minutes with snow on the ground.

Yet, when snow is forecast, citizens’ eyes glaze over and, like zombies, people head for the supermarket, there to scarf up all the bread and milk in sight (even if they don’t eat bread and don’t drink milk) in some sort of primitive, mute ritual.

It’s some kind of bizarre, sublimal reflex, as if the word, “snow,” triggers a vision of the Yukon and, somewhere deep in their subconscious, people imagine themselves marooned in their log cabins until Sergeant Preston digs them out, three episodes from now.

It’s fantastically, farcically in(s)ane.

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4 comments

  1. Karen

    February 25, 2007 at 4:26 pm

    We aren’t in eastern Colorado, by any means, but the same thing goes on here all the time. This last storm we had yesterday, had the same effect. This time I didn’t fall for it, & we were missed totally. All we got was a lot of wind from the mountains. 35-40 miles east of us got hammered big time. Interstate 70 was closed from Limon to Kansas, again. We live 2 miles from the grocery, but when snow is forecast, the stores are all like that. It’s horrible.

     
  2. Frank

    February 25, 2007 at 7:48 pm

    Well, I know you aren’t in eastern Colorado, more like central Colorado, which is more urbanized. But two feet of snow is two feet of snow, and it two feet of snow deserves respect.

    Frankly, I can’t get worked up about Kansas being closed, but that’s the Easterner in me. . . .

    Our normal snows are more like three or four inches (we get the two-foot snowfalls every eight or ten years or so). It’s not as if people are going to be marooned in their igloos for months before they chip their way free.

     
  3. Karen

    February 26, 2007 at 8:39 am

    Actually, we’re just west of Denver, at the base of the foothills. 20 miles west, you’re IN the mountain towns.

    I went to the store yesterday afternoon, & it was like all the seniors got brave after we missed the storms on this side of the area. You could tell the scavenging had been going on, & the store hadn’t been totally restocked, which they were doing in the middle of the day. They hadn’t gotten to the high shelves by the time I was there, & there weren’t any tall people there either! I had to climb once to get what I needed.

    Frank, remember the snow sculpture email I sent to you? I think that’s how I feel about winter, right about now.

     
  4. Frank

    February 26, 2007 at 5:35 pm

    That’s pretty much how I feel about winter, period. You can’t go boating in an open runabout in winter.

    We ended up getting off easy. Instead of a low of 31 F, we ended up with a low of 33 F, so, instead of three inches of ice, we had three inches of slush. No school closures or late openings. And I’m off to the job site tomorrow with 16 pages of a new procedure for approval.