Fence mending

A friend (not from around here) commented late last week about the slim pickings last week on 56572. Silence has its reasons was my answer. Some things in a small town are best left unsaid, undocumented. Super sensitive stuff for example. Stuff based more on hearsay than fact. Stuff it would take too long to explain.

What did happen last week was that what was billed as a Clipper turned out to be a three day "Snow Event." It snowed without ceasing for seventy-two hours. Schools did not close, open late or go home early. People who needed to use the roads found stress. People who needed to clean the roads found stress. Already on the second day we were getting Wraparound Flurries and the wind associated with being on the backside of the Low. Even if you weren't looking for it, you found stress.

Three prominent locals died last week. Two of them were still in their fifties. The largest of the three funerals was today, one of our most prominent life long citizens who succumbed to cancer during the Snow Event.

During a Snow Event Broadway doesn't seem like it. The city plows the snow up on the curb. The shop owners shovel it back into the street. One must be careful for car doors opening in traffic and, as is always the case in early winter, for fresh arrivals who have never driven in a Snow Event of any kind, let alone one which carries on for seventy-two hours.

So picture icy sidewalks from early December's Ice Event, then a mound of frozen salt slush from mid-December's Snow Event, then a row of Buick Roadmasters parked in front of Pelican Drug or the Post Office, then an almost daily Funeral Event.

Picture two narrow lanes of traffic with a frequent PRPD squad car with strobes flashing followed by a long line of Buicks with their headlights on coming down East Mill from Trinity Lutheran through the red light north up Broadway passed the for sale signs on nearly every store then left through the north light west on 108 past the VF and the Chinese tractor dealer out to Ringsaker.

Picture some fresh arrivals bundled in their colorful tropical clothing, sandals and free coats from the Pass it On Store getting out of their cheap cars with full coverage to watch.

Add to the air some car exhaust and blowing snow, may be even the faint smell of the settling ponds behind West Central and you've got yourself last week.

The Boys Basketball Team is still the town's biggest hope for next year. As predicted here on 56572, revenge for the final defeat in football was exacted on the Hawley Nuggets on their home court Friday night.

Saturday was the Holiday Extravaganza at Faith Lutheran so Sunday after the Sunday School Programs were over everybody could sit around, eat one another's Christmas cookies, watch the Vikings lose and recover.