Dec. 13, 2001 - 21:12 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Snowflakes

I might have written about this before, have scanned through looking for something else and didn't see anything there.

In 1982 Heather and I had our flower shop running smooth, had weathered holidays and felt confident. We had another floral designer and a deliveryman. I also served as another delivery man and bookkeeper. Thanksgiving was very busy and kept us all jumping. I think we did well.

Christmas was lurking around the corner and already orders for the season were piling up. It was busy but not up to the hilt panic. The delivery man and I got our heads together and talked over the time we had keeping up during Thanksgiving. We talked to Heather and the other designer and we decided to deliver everything as far ahead of time as we could. Some orders specified a certain delivery date, most of them were to be delivered before Christmas.

The ladies took a deep breath and built arrangements as fast as they could, I wrote up orders as well as delivering and our deliveryman was doing the magic thing. He was a treasure, he was. He was fast, efficient and charming to the recipients, I couldn't have found a better man after a years search I do believe.

The night before Christmas eve day, all our orders were caught up. There were 17 ready for delivery the next day in the cooler. Heather arranged to take a little time off on the next day to be with our middle daughter to go finish up the shopping. Our middle daughter brought her friend along planning to spend the night with us and get an early start the next morning, both of them left their kids at home with their dads thinking they would be back not much after dark. Our daughter's friend had her trunk full of Christmas presents already.

Then burst upon us the dreadful Christmas Eve blizzard of 1982. By daylight, if you could call it that, it had been snowing all night and the wind was drifting it horribly. Our son had a friend who owned a fourwheel drive pickup and told us he and his friend would be coming by to take me to the flower shop. So, Heather had the whole day to be with daughter and her friend and do their girly thing. Yeah, right.

The guys started early, but it was nine o'clock by the time they got to our house. They intended to go to a mall near our flower shop to finish up their Christmas shopping and pick me up at closing time. Ten thirty we reached the shop, our designer who only lived a block or so and had done mortal combat with snow and blow was waiting in the 7-11 at the end of our line of buildings sipping coffee and feeling she might just have to make her way back home. The guys headed for the mall.

The orders were up already, and as more orders came in on the Mercury and the phone we accepted them for delivery several days after Christmas - explaining what the weather was doing in the Denver area. Shortly after we got the doors open and the walk shoveled our delivery man called us and said he was stuck in the drive way at his home. His house was below street level and the snow had drifted down making it impossible to get out. We had I think, two customers early on and two customers who worked nearby came shivering in for flowers for their bosses desks. After that our designer spent her time neatening up and cleaning up. She stocked shelves and all the other stuff she could think of, I caught up on our bookwork and for the rest of the day we sat, drank coffee and watched people who had to brave the storm to get to the supermarket for food come by our shop pulling garbage bags behind themselves with groceries. They were a grim looking bunch, their hats topped with a frosted layer of snow. Eyes squinched up against the cold and snow, their eyebrows roofed with the white stuff, the same stuff which covered their shoulders. And it kept snowing.

I don't know just how much snow fell total, but it was enough to paralyze the whole area. The designer and I waited for the guys to come pick us up. She was a little bit of a thing and would have had a strugge against the wind to make her way home. No snow boots or gloves, she had toughed her way to work. She was ready to wait 'til the men got back from the mall.

Eventually they drove up at about 7 PM. I made arrangements with the folks at the 7-11 and we took 15 arrangements up for them to hold, telling them that I would leave a big sign on our door that they could pick up their arrangements at the 7-11. Then I locked up the shop and the designer and I piled in. They took her home and watched her wade in hip deep snow to her door. She refused help, saying that the snow was light and she could do it, and she did.

Luckily the gas station in our shopping center was open because the truck was almost out of gas. We headed home weaving our way between stalled and messed up cars. Looked like every guy with a blade on his pickup came out to do wonders only to end up immobile. The scene was mobile jackstraws. cars slewed every which way. Some places we had to make a detour because of blockage ahead.

As we went toward home the guys told me their sad story. When they got there the mall was closed and most of the people who had driven there thinking the snow would let up found out that it didn't give an inch. Most were stuck, the biggest proportion of them were women. The guys spent the rest of the day helping people get out of the parking lot.

It was a tired ten thirty at night when we came puffing in our door. Obviously my son and his friend were there for the night as well as daughter and her friend. The women had bulled their way through the drifts and went to the nearby supermarket for enough groceries to tide us over. Pulling garbage bags behind them through the snow.

We made the night okay and had as much of a Christmas as we could there. Daughter and her friend talking on the phone to their respective mates and children several times. My son's friend called his home at let them know he was okay before we went to bed that night.

Some streets were cleared (the arteries) by the day after Christmas.

Our orphans of the storm all departed for home. I drove 17 miles to work that night using every bit of ingenuity I could, thinking a mile ahead, never coming to a complete stop anywhere. I got to work and the parking lot was practically empty, most of the bosses stayed home which left us with some of the nicer supers, the few of us went to the cafeteria, drank coffee, smoked, played cards and swapped sea stories. All of us stayed the full eight hours, just a formality I guess, nobody seemed to have the authority to let us go home.

The trip back home was worse because the drifts were deeper than before, it had stopped snowing but the snow was still blowing. I stopped at a 7-11 near home to gas up, slipped and fell at the pumps knocking my glasses crazy and myself silly. I called in sick for the next two days, which I was. Wasn't the flu, but something nearly as bad. On my return to work my super told me the union steward and himself were sitting me down for a write up session because my attendance had slipped a bit and the super felt I should be put on the edge. The write up went against me of course, the steward and I signed the paper. But two weeks later our steward made the point to management that I had made my way to work when most of management and factory hands had stayed home and that my illness was due to the exposure I experienced during blizzard time. The writeup was removed from the file.

So my Christmas eve blizzard ended then in blowing Snowflakes . . . . . . . .

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