Sunday, February 07, 2010
Metro columnist Dan Casey: Hey, winter, quit it already
Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
dan.casey
@roanoke.com
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Dan Casey
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Passengers load Flight 5543 en-route to Atlanta before it takes off from Roanoke Regional Airport Friday morning. [See more photos of the early morning snow]
Related
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Yesterday
From this week's papers
- During snowfall, residents rely on Valley Metro buses
- Winter turns deadly on I-81
- Third major storm slaps region with snow, sleet
- Grocers await stock after shopping frenzy
- Weather Journal: Storm likely to sprinkle more snow, less sleet
- Trusty winter tool in short supply locally
- Winter takes another wallop at Southwest Va.
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Use #swvasnow to send your comment!
MEMO
To: Old Man Winter
From: A Roanoke Valley victim
Subject: Enough!
The people down here are getting antsy.
By the time you see this, you'll have dumped three major snowstorms on our region in less than eight weeks.
Our backs ache, our kids are going stir crazy and their mothers have cleaned the drugstores out of Valium.
A plan to fly some more in was shelved because of your antics this weekend. Thanks.
There are only four classes of people smiling here in the charming Roanoke Valley right now.
First is the body shop owners. They are raking in so much money it's spilling out of their safes.
Second are the Yankees, who are used to harsh and unforgiving winters, and know how to drive in it. Even though technically I am one, I've lived here long enough to learn to despise them.
Third are the people at Appalachian Power Co., the local electric monopoly. This winter its bills have soared higher than the space shuttle, even for people with gas or oil heat.
For anyone with a heat pump, those doozies look like the company has got 10 kilowatt-hours confused with the national debt of Bolivia. And they are asking each homeowner to pay it off, individually.
Fourth, and smiling widest of all, are the people in Salem.
Such as Christopher Overstreet, a reader of this newspaper.
Below is most of a boastful message he posted on my blog, where area residents have vented many a frustration about local snow removal efforts.
(I have deleted the sentence in which he suggested Roanoke's government is run by "morons.")
"It's not really a big secret, folks. ... Roanoke city is a joke in terms of taking care of their roads when it snows. Yeah, I live in Salem, but I moved here from Roanoke because of their idiotic government and financial debacles.
"I watched from my living room window, in Salem, on Saturday morning, the City of Salem GARBAGE TRUCKS are equipped with snow plows!
"And not one, but 2 follow each other down the streets. I saw my street plowed at least a half dozen times Saturday alone! WOW, there's a novel idea, Roanoke City; put the plows on your garbage trucks instead of paying outside contractors and you wouldn't be in the hole 300K already for snow removal!
"Thank God I live in Salem, and yeah, we are snobs about our city, but this is a good example where we have a right to be!"
At first I thought Overstreet was hallucinating. I believed the brutally efficient dictatorship in Salem had merely outlawed snow. And I figured that you, Old Man Winter, were very accommodating.
That was why Salem's pavement is visible three seconds after the last snowflake falls.
And it is why their kids don't get a day off school for each inch that accumulates.
Salem spokesman Mike Stevens set me straight, however.
Last weekend, the city had 25 plows working at clearing 300 lane miles of streets -- or one plow per 12 lane miles, Stevens said. Counting mechanics and people who loaded the salt trucks, fully 100 people were hard at work on Salem snow-clearing efforts.
Roanoke spokeswoman Melinda Mayo said the city has 95 personnel manning 57 plows on 1,200 lane miles of city streets, not counting 10 people shoveling sidewalks.
So Roanoke has roughly the same number of snow-removal workers as Salem, but double the number of trucks clearing four times the quantity of pavement.
Mayo apologized for taking 24 hours to round up this information. That's OK; I am patient.
That patience has served me well this winter. Such as when it took three days for a plow to get to my street after the December storm, or almost 24 hours last weekend.
I don't fault the city for this, however.
If I was them, I would do the same thing to any newspaper wiseacre who took potshots at me.
Somebody's street has to be last, right? Why not that SOB's?
Another correspondent, Brenda Espriella, told me she believes people are complaining too much about you, Old Man Winter.
At 55, Espriella fondly recalled the winters of her childhood when you dumped 10-foot drifts around Virginia 40 about four miles west of Rocky Mount.
Back then her dad, Silas Nichols, had a sure-wheeled contraption he used to load logging trucks in the woods. No depth of snow could bog it down, even when the white stuff was piled high above the mailboxes.
Silas would wait until the cars began sliding and stacking up on Pigg River Hill. Arming himself against the cold with a half-gallon of moonshine, he'd climb on his contraption and pull them out, one by one, gratis.
Now that was snow, Espriella said.
"It just amazes me that people think this is a lot of snow," she said.
Fortunately, Brenda is in the minority.
As the subject line notes, the rest of us have had enough.
Dan Casey's column runs Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday.
