Snow day
12.18.06 (8:54 am) [edit]
It was a typical rainy winter day in February 1980 and I was making my delivery run. The day was dreary, but dreary works for me. What some call dreary, I simply experience as restful, peaceful; I find the dark days easy to take. Well it could not simply stay a rainy winter day, it had to start snowing. Now I find snow dreary in the popular sense of the term. Don’t know why, but snow makes my insides cold, in ways that I don’t like. So right after it started snowing, quite hard, you know the kind with the very large flakes, that looks like God is scratching his beard…..yeah that its, dandruff, it looked like dandruff. Meanwhile the temperature is dropping and I still have a few stops to make. Now let me tell you, in Atlanta snow is bad news if you are out and about; in ways that can’t be touched the way rain can cause trouble for drivers. Today they have some plows, but back then, nope; at least I never saw one. You tell Atlanta that there is three inches of snow coming and the stores are packed with people getting ready for the big “storm”.
Well in any case, I was driving down Moreland Ave., mumbling to myself, too much as I often do, when I noticed something very strange about two blocks down the street. Even though the dandruff was falling heavily, I could in the distance see something bright orange, and I thought it had to be a coat. As I drew closer I noticed that it was an elderly woman, perhaps in her middle to late eighties, slowly treading her way down the almost empty street, with the weather getting worse by the minute, and the wind was even starting to pick up. As I slowly passed I could see that she was struggling, and I started to become worried about her. I could not stop, I had some cars behind me, so I kept going and wished her luck. Well wishing her luck did not work. Being a tad compulsive about being a caregiver, I started to talk to myself about what I should do. Well in the end I decided to turn around and see if she would accept a lift from me. I was in a Super Van, I had a very long red beard, and my hair, was what some would call unkempt. So I thought, sure she would be thrilled to jump into a truck with someone who looked like he should be wearing leather and on a Harley.
So I passed her again, went up a couple of blocks and turned around. I pulled over about a hundred feet ahead of her as she slowly made her way down the street. So I took a deep breath, got out of the truck, and tried to look harmless and small. She walked up to me and stopped, and I asked her where she was going. She told me she was trying to get to her beautician; she had a 10 AM appointment. I asked her how far it was, and it was another block down the street, which for her, in that weather was a long way, and her chances of falling were getting more certain by the minute. So I asked her if I could give her a lift. To me surprise she said yes. I opened the door to the van, which I found out right away was too high for her to get in on her own. So she let me lift her up and put her in. We got in and I started down the block, trying to find a way to turn around. Well we finally made it back to the place that she was headed, and I again went around and lifted her out onto the sidewalk. As she was walking away I said “thanks for letting me help you, many people would not trust me enough to give them a lift”. She turned, looked me up and down, smiled and said with a straight face: “ Oh I am from New York, I am not afraid of anything”. She turned, and left me laughing, as I am sure she meant to do. She also promised to call a taxi when she was finished with her appointment.
So I continued on my journey, my deliveries, and for some reason the snow did not make my insides cold in ways that I did not like. I actually felt warmth. That day the snow did not bother me at all; though only for that day.