Watch that Snowplow

We dodged a big bullet last week. Our cold spell and near zero temperatures were mixed with days of high painful winds. But the real deep snow stayed away. Even as it was, we got several inches of the freezing mist, sleet and snow. But it was nothing like the series of ice storms and blizzards we suffered back in the 1970s. Made me remember one of the City of Allen’s faithful employees Les Rinehart. Or was it his twin brother Wes? But during one of these long-ago snowstorms, I remember him keeping the town grader in motion and going during our worse storm never letting our main streets get shut down by the drifts. I still appreciate this guy and all his hard work for the town of Allen.

What brought up this old memory is a story last week about a faithful government employee named Tim Rekey who was putting too much speed on his Ohio snowplow. He wasn’t as careful as Wes. The fast-moving plow was pushing a steady batch of icy stuff all the way across the Ohio turnpike’s medium into the way of the oncoming traffic. The result? Well, this caused a 55-car pileup with many minor injuries and kept the ordinarily busy pike shut down for hours. Tim was only trying to speed things up, but his bosses didn’t appreciate it. The Ohio Highway Patrol issued him citations for his various misdeeds and his bosses fired him. And he also can’t have the pleasure of driving the snowplow anymore.

Another thing our Wes did was this: He piled his plowed snow into a very large, neat pile in the shape of a big building right there where our flagpole stands now between the Baptist Family Life Center and the Gymnasium. When the snowfall stopped and the streets thawed, Wes’s huge work of snow art remained. And it stayed put for weeks. Winter was just about over before his artistic ice construction finally melted away, ending much speculation by locals about how much longer it could last. Such are the pastimes engaged in by Allen folk during a slow winter’s spring.

As the calendar ushers in the first few signs of spring it reminds us that we will soon have our spring storms. Most of our storms can be noisy and put on a big show and we have to be reminded each year that these natural nature shows can also be dangerous. So, get ready for the fireworks. The TV weathermen wax eloquent each season over which meteorologist and channel is the most accurate. And which one indeed has the most powerful megawatt radars and computer enhanced radar displays to show when and how we are to soon be ground up to bits by a horrendous tornado.

Me? I identify with the poor farm woman who faithfully trudged off to her cellar each and every time she was told to by the weatherman. Each and every time she would drag her sleepdeprived body back out of the cellar and note that nothing had blown away. The only thing lost was her night’s sleep. But eventually the time came when she popped her cellar door open and as she looked over toward her house, she noted that It was flattened, its contents scattered over 40 acres of land. Turning to her barn she noted that it too was gone with feed and hay scattered all around. The cows were all wounded. Her big chicken house looked like a bomb had landed on it and dead and injured chickens were flapping all over the place. The farmwoman, with a satisfied look on her face said, “Now that’s the way its ought to look when you come out of the cellar.”

So, regardless of how you come out of the storm season, I hope that you are satisfied one way or the other. Don’t forget to go to your church this Sunday. The weather is usually pretty good in there.

Wayne Bullard, DPh

cwaynebullard@gmail.com