One (maybe all) of the local TV stations' news teams have taken to calling this the worst winter ever. As in, "Worst. Winter. Ever." Maybe this means it's now official. Not that anyone who's living here is gonna be surprised by that. And you people who used to live here but wised up and headed off for warmer climes aren't gonna be surprised either since your friends and family have been bombarding you with horror stories and gruesome pictures of the Minnesota version of Global Climate Change. I figure we've got a legitimate right to bitch about the weather. It's gotten pretty miserable.
If anyone had said a week or so ago that it couldn't possibly get any worse, I might have been inclined to agree. The newscasters had already tagged this winter as the worst ever. But we'd've been wrong. It's gotten worse. Even much worse.
The street maintenance crowd of the City of Saint Paul has washed its hands of the pure-d horseshit job it had been doing when it came to plowing residential streets. Having never once come even close to clearing the streets curb to curb (despite the multiple opportunities of umpteen earlier snow emergencies), City Hall threw up its hands in surrender on Friday and declared that parking is forbidden on the even-numbered sides of residential streets for the duration of the winter. Which could end on April 1 (so says the declaration) or maybe Memorial Day or maybe in time for the ceremonial first pitch of the All Star Game across the river. That would be something. I remember watching Nolan Ryan stride angrily in from the right field bullpen at old Metropolitan Stadium to pitch for the Angels in a Twins home opener back in the 70's. Ryan sported a long olive-drab trench coat which could have come from a Kaplan Brothers surplus store. That was probably his statement of protest at being forced to pitch on a day when there were still 25'-tall piles of snow out in the parking lots. Ryan owned the Twins that day.
But that was on like April 10th. This year's All Star Game at Target Field will come about three months later on the calendar. While it's not too likely that there'll still be snow in the shadows down in the right field corner, I still like the mental picture.
What this newly-announced even-numbered parking ban amounts to for me and Miz Susan is that we risk getting tagged and towed if we park our cars in front of our house. Our very own house, the Laurel Avenue Estates. I'm willing to swear that we paid the city a couple of hefty curbside parking spot license fees back when we moved in. Or did the paper-pusher at the closing just tell us that we had and then pocketed the cash herself? Jeez, what a couple of saps we are.
I'm now forced to look for parking for the Camry and the Tahoe a half a block west down on Fry. It's as if I've been forced into Mr. Peabody's Way-Back Machine for a return to Laurel Avenue, circa 1977. Back then, I was parking a light blue Ford Galaxy station wagon along that same stretch while I was living in the corner duplex at 1630. Golldarn, am I a small town boy or what? It's not like the extra half block walk from the cars is gonna kill either one of us but it's still annoying. And now that I think about it, the dope on the corner of our block didn't bother to shovel his walk all last winter and his sidewalks turned into 6" thick sheets of ice. I'd know cuz I was the good neighbor who spent hours chopping that ice up in April and maybe even May. Am I still a good neighbor if I'm cursing under my breath the whole time that I'm doing good-neighborly deeds? I'm surprised that the ice didn't claim a couple of victims last spring; now I'm worried that it'll get one of us this year.
I'll grant that moving half of the parked cars off of the streets has opened things up nicely. They've taken on this wide Haussmannesque Parisian boulevard look. If it would only warm up about 70°, I can imagine a lively sidewalk cafe society springing up, complete with little umbrellaed tables and aspiring hipsters with berets and laptops. Too bad that some of the other worst-winter-ever features forced on us aren't quite so cheerful.
People are exhausted and they're stumbling around like extras on The Walking Dead. But instead of dried blood all over faces and hands and clothes, our zombies are showing off salt-stained boots and shoes and pants cuffs and overcoats. Chapped and cracked cheeks and lips and hands along with permanent cases of hat hair are the war wounds that we've suffered during this WWE.. The cars that are still allowed to park on the odd-numbered sides of streets are often left halfway up snowbanks with decided lists to port. The city streets are caked with ice and some of the intersections are worn so smooth from spinning and skidding tires that they could easily pass as competition-ready ice rinks fresh from Zamboni runs. The ice on the streets might not be all bad as much of it covers up a nightmare-in-waiting of potholes and broken pavement. And the freeways aren't much better. It's been so damn cold that there are still ice patches from the storm a week ago under bridges where the sun don't shine and MNDOT's chemicals are ineffective. I've seen more crashes and spinouts on my scenic commutes up and down I-94 over the last week than I remember from the previous four winters.
Like I was saying, anybody who was thinking a week ago that it couldn't get worse has been proven more wrong than Mitt Romney strategists on Monday night before the 2012 election. It has gotten worse and apparently we ain't done yet. The predictions are for 17° and 15° below zero for tonite and tomorrow night.
It's looking as if there should be plenty of room for corned beef and cabbage in the fridge for St.Patrick's Day. The Guinness and the Harp should do quite nicely in the snowbanks outside. I'm not sure how O'Gara's is going to handle its overflow parking though.
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