Snow Archives

January 20, 2016January 21, 2016

FL Van Sees Snow; Surrenders

My Odyssey van took a dusting of snow on Tuesday afternoon in stride, even making me switch the heated seat setting from High to Low and turn down the heater.

Predictions had been all over the place for the days leading up to the “snow event,” as the TV folks like to dub it. At first, we were going to get a mix of sleet and freezing rain; then they thought snow would be 1-2 inches, then 2-4, then 4-6, and once it went all the way up to 10-12, before dialing back to 6-8 or thereabouts. In reality, I doubt if we got more than two inches.

“Asking for a friend”

Since I’d been gone a bit, the cupboards were mostly bare. (Question: if you’ve had milk in the fridge for, say, six or eight weeks, and it has lumpy stuff floating on the top of it, is it safe to call it cottage cheese and eat it if you pour on enough sugar? As Bill Hopkins would say, “Asking for a friend.”) Even I know that if something in a plastic zipper bag has something green growing in it like these plants at the old Plaza Galleria, it is best to carry it outside immediately.

I wasn’t looking forward to braving the lines in the stores to stock up, but it wasn’t too crazy. I DID note a lot of bread, milk, chips and toilet paper in the baskets fore and aft. I didn’t see much beer or booze, however. I guess Cape folks keep plenty of that on hand just in case someone slips Prohibition back into the lawbooks without anybody noticing.

“I give up! Take me home”

What did I see the next morning? My poor van was holding up its little arms like a dying cockroach and begging to leave the land of Wind Chill to go back to a place where they talk about the Heat Index in January.

Actually, the idea of lifting my wipers was something Kid Matt passed on: “The lifting the wipers thing seems a new trend based on this article from Cleveland. Everyone in Oregon and Washington seemed to be doing it…”

I’m not sure I’d do that in a parking lot where it might tempt vandals, but I was cool doing it in my driveway. I didn’t go anywhere today, so I didn’t test how well it worked. We’re supposed to get some indeterminate amount of snow Thursday and Friday, so I’ll get another shot at it.

It BETTER snow this winter. I bought 50 pounds of ice melt. The way the woodpile is going down, I may be trading it for firewood soon.

March 5, 2015

Snow on Cyders’ Mountain

Jessica Cyders, curator of the Athens County Historical Society and Museum in Athens, Ohio, and her husband, T.J., live on the top of a tall hill in a rural part of Athens County, a place that practically defines “rural area.”

How tall is the hill?

She texted this photo captioned, “TJ got the ATV stuck in the Ken Steinhoff Memorial Ditch. I just helped him pull it out with the winch. Snowshoes came in handy today.”

Steeper than it looks

The last time she and I took a road trip from Cape to Athens, we rolled into town late to find her driveway covered with wet leaves. “I don’t think you’re going to be able to make it up it,” she warned me.

I gunned the van. I mean, what does SHE know, she just lives there.

Just a little beyond where T.J. is standing, the road kicks up a few degrees. It was there that the traction control kicked in, then the wheels started spinning out. I conceded defeat and stomped on the brakes. The car started sliding back down the hill with all four wheels locked. I might as well have been on ice.

I booted her out to make it up to the house by herself, and started to back down the lane, which, unfortunately, has some curves in it. Every time I had to make a correction or step on the brakes, gravity would take over.

Ken Steinhoff Memorial Ditch

The next thing I knew, I was in a slow slide into a ditch. It didn’t matter if I gunned the engine or put on the brakes, it was just a slow-motion train wreck. I called Jessica on my cell to tell her about my predicament.

She and T.J. ambled down to see how bad the situation was. She had a smirk on her face.

T.J. teaches engineering at Ohio University, so I counted on him to take one look and say, “No problem. I’ll just go back to the shed and get some duct tape and some binder’s twine and we’ll have you out in less time than it’ll take the Little Woman to heat up some hot chocolate and bake us some cookies.”

Instead, he shook his head and said, “You need a wrecker.”

“Call me a wrecker”

I remember an exchange on the police scanner one night in the distant past: “Athens 1 to HQ, Call me a wrecker.”

“OK, Athens 1, you’re a wrecker.”

When it’s almost midnight-thirty on a cold, blustery, rainy weekend night, it’s not a good time to call for a wrecker. The first two companies said, “We’ll be there on Monday morning. If we can find you.”

The third guy said, “I’ve got my shoes off and I’m sitting where it’s nice and warm watching my girlfriend do her homework. But, I’ll be there shortly.”

I didn’t even ask how much it was going to cost. It didn’t matter.

The wrecker went sliding down the hill

About 40 minutes later, the wrecker showed up. After a little backing and filling, the driver hooked up a tow cable to my van. He told me to stay in the vehicle to “help” him try to move it. I’ve seen what happens when a cable snaps, so I wasn’t crazy about being in direct line of the tow, but I also couldn’t open the driver’s side door because it was up against a bank.

He took up the slack on the cable, the van gave a little lurch, then the wrecker started sliding toward me. He repositioned the wrecker, gave another pull, and got the same result.

It was time to get creative. He rigged a pulley to a tree on the opposite side of the road and said he was going to try to pull me crossways in the road, with the eventual hope that he could get me onto a solid surface pointing downhill.

When he finally got me to a 90-degree angle to the roadway, he said, “Give it the gas. See if you can pull yourself up and out.”

“You can’t see it in the dark, but about four feet in front of me is a steep drop-off that ends up in a creek,” I warned him. “If it grabs hold, you’re going to see a blur and hear a splash.”

“You’ll be OK,” he assured me.

He was right

The tires got some bite, I got pointed downhill, he unhooked the cable and said he’d go to the top of the hill to turn around, then he’d meet me at the bottom to settle up.

The trip down was a little interesting, but I made it down to flat ground where their lane meets what passes for a real road. I waited. And waited. And waited. After about 30 minutes, he pulled alongside me.

“I thought I was going to have to call a wrecker for the wrecker,” he said.

“Are you the owner or a worker bee?” I asked him.

“I own the company, but I’ll entertain an offer right now.”

The job cost me a hundred bucks plus a tip. Worth every penny of it.

I was about as happy as Curator Jessica doing a snow angel selfie.

[Thanks to Jessica for providing the photos.]

February 7, 2014

We Had Snow in the ’60s

You folks are tired of looking at snow and ice, I’m sure, but this is a reminder we had snow back in the 1960s. We had less snow than Cape has gotten in the last few winters, but I think we were better prepared for it. More cars had snow tires and it was common to put chains on the drive wheels back then.

I think this might have been taken at one of the stations where The Missourian would drop off our bundles of papers. It might have been a Gulf. The press would spit out the papers in batches of 50 or 100; they would be handed off to a binding machine that would put a blank wrap of paper around the stack, then twist a thick copper wire tightly around it to hold them together. A sheet of paper with your route number on it would let you know which bundles belonged to you.

When I first started carrying papers at age 12, I had to work to untwist the copper wire to get it off my bundle. When I got a little older and little stronger, I could grab the bundle under the wrapper paper, give it a hard yank and break the copper wire. When winter came around, the station owner would ask us to save the copper wire for him so he could use it to hold tire chains on his customers’ cars.

La-Petite Motel

A lot of these negatives are pretty scratched and spotted up. Just pretend the spots are snow flakes. The 1968 City Directory says the La-Petite Motel was at 1301 North Kingshighway and was owned or managed by Charles and Lorraine Scheller.

Human-powered snow cleaning

The sidewalks around Central High School were cleaned by guys with shovels, not fancy snowblowers. The fact that they are being cleaned leads me to believe school was in session, snow or no snow.

A long throw

I don’t know if he’s shoveling out the stairwell or just breaking off overhanging snow.

Must have been a windy storm

This snow storm must have had some wind with it to pile up drifts like these.

Central’s basement

I had forgotten how they built Central’s basement to be able to have windows to let light in.

Hilly neighborhood

I tried to read the mailboxes, but the letters were too small. I don’t know where this neighborhood was, but it was hilly and the snow didn’t have many tracks.

Out in the country

This house looks familiar, but I can’t put a name or a face to it. Anybody? You can watch some 8mm home movies of snow here.

As usual, you can click on the photos to make them larger.

December 5, 2013February 22, 2021

My First Snowball Riot

I transferred into Ohio University in Athens from Southeast Missouri State College my junior year. I was lucky to land a slot as staff photographer for The OU Post as soon as I hit campus.

I hadn’t been there long when we got what was a pretty hefty snow storm for that area. It was a lot like Cape in that respect: we got promised a lot of snow, but very little ever got delivered.

I pulled these out because it looks like Cape is going to get a big winter storm over the next few days.

Started out with snowball fights

The excitement started with impromptu snowball fights between students. It didn’t take long, however, before the Athens cops showed up with their bats and hats. Most of them joined in the fun at first, batting down the snowballs with their riot batons and joking with students.

The fun didn’t last long

Before long, though, they were vastly outnumbered and it became less fun.

It’s time to take back the streets

First, there was an organized attempt herd the more orderly students away from the area (even if they really wanted to go the other way).

Order turns to chaos

Eventually it became a student vs. police free-for-all.

Let’s make snowballs

Then somebody got the idea of rolling up some monster snowballs. Before long, there were several five or six-foot iceballs blocking the street. The authorities were not amused.

Call in the big guns

Somebody called in reinforcements in the form of snow plows and a motorgrader.

When an irresistible forces hits an immoveable object, unexpected consequences occur. Several parked cars suffered collateral damage

I think I like this school

My reaction was, “You know, I think I’m going to like this school. I never got to shoot anything like this at SEMO.” Little did I know what was going to be in store for me.

Photo gallery of the Snowball Riot

Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the sides to move through the gallery.