Snow Emergency Soliloquy

Saint Paul declared a Snow Emergency last night. I had to do some driving yesterday and I know how bad it was, so the snow emergency was a good thing.

For those of you out in the suburbs, I’ll explain that Saint Paul keeps snow emergencies simple so that anyone can handle them. The night of the snow emergency you move your car off of any street with a Night Plow sign. Between 6:am and 8:am you get up and move your car back to the Night Plow streets (which have already been cleared) so that the plows can finish their work. All done in less than 24 hours.

This morning my wife got up early and moved the cars, took my son to school, did some shopping, and came home to find that a Chrysler Steroid Le Behemoth had been left in front of our house. We have a double lot, but the plows had to skip our entire section of street because of this thing. That means that we had a big pile of plowed snow where we usually park, where neighbors usually park, where the folks who go to the church at the corner on Sunday usually park, etc.

We sent our son out to shovel the sidewalk, and I joined him a little while later to shovel the street. At first, I just started piling the snow in front of the big silver symbol of waste, decadence, and social decay. Then it occurred to me that I was only causing bigger problems for myself in the long run, since what I was really doing was building up a big frozen speed bump. Most likely, I figured, strangers and neighbors would see the clear spot where my car typically goes and park there when I’m out, leaving me with only the unshoveled frozen slush pile as a parking space.

About thirty minutes into the cleanup effort the owner of the stylized tank showed up. She wasn’t a neighbor. She was a student who had spent the night at her sister’s apartment in one of the quadruplexes down the street from us. She was a little upset that her car had been plowed in. I don’t think she noticed that we were a little upset that we had to shovel the street because of her much-too-expensive-for-a-college-student car. I politely suggested that she could grab a shovel from our porch and help dig out. She got the shovel, she dug a path to the door of her car. Then she scraped the windshield. We dug out a path in front of her wheels so she could drive out, which she did. Good luck, good bye, and don’t park here again.

My wife says I was too nice. I probably was. My goal was to get the street cleared so that we could park in front of our own house. Hopefully without making things worse (we still have all of March to get through). I did use the experience to explain something to my son, however. This is what I pointed out to him about this girl and her SUV (Subjugate Underlings Viciously):

  • She caused the problem in the first place.
  • She recognized how it inconvenienced her, but had no clue how much trouble and work she had caused for others.
  • She let us bail her out.
  • Then she drove away without helping us with the cleanup, even though we gave her ample opportunity and tools.

It’s a wonderful metaphor for the Wall Street bailouts, don’t you think?

More than that, however, it is a metaphor for the political cycle for as long as I have been old enough to vote (and probably longer). We get someone like Reagan who cuts taxes, spends like crazy and raises the deficit, cuts services and lets infrastructure crumble, cuts regulation and lets business have a party. They eat at the trough until it’s fouled and empty and then look to the rest of us to clean up the mess. We, of course, elect someone who will lead us through the pain of cleaning up the mess because we have to live with it too. We put our shoulders to the wheel and get the economy moving again. We bite the bullet, work harder, make do with less, and then the cycle comes around again. Once things are more or less okay, we wind up with the same herd taking up space at the community trough.

I don’t want to see that car in front of my house again.
Not unless she’s got a trunk full of shovels and a car full of friends willing to get to work.