Recycled entry
Jan. 11th, 2007 11:22 amI wrote this in ![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spezzatura's LJ in response to her rant about Seattle-area drivers not having a clue how to deal with this frozen white stuff, as opposed to people from practically anywhere else in the country including folks who grew up a few miles north, south, east, or west of here (the ones who grew up west of here lived on the Olympic Peninsula, mostly, not in Puget Sound. If they lived on islands in Puget Sound, they learned how to drive boats at an early age and their driving-cars-in-snow skills are irrelevant to today's sermonette). Since it was a longer and more discursive entry than I usually put into comments, I decided to repost it here.
...packs of feral drivers...
I learned to drive in Ohio; Glenn learned to drive in Alaska. We had to know how to drive in snow. I used to practice putting my car into a skid and pulling it out again, over and over, on my way to high school, while my carpool passengers giggled insanely. People who grow up here don't have enough time with snow on the ground to practice. It's hard to learn a skill you can only use for six or ten hours every other year.
A billion years ago (okay, 21 years ago), there was a real snowstorm, about a foot of snow, just before Thanksgiving, 1985. It was a smaller city then, after the Boeing bust, before the dot-com boom, and people stayed home.
I didn't; I was buying my first house, and it was due to close that day, just before I was due to fly to Florida to see my grandparents. It was due to close that day, and the seller was putting on a new roof as a condition of the sale, and the roofer left the roof uncovered overnight because he was a doofus who didn't check the weather report, and a foot of snow fell into my kitchen-to-be.
Well, said my friend the attorney, you would have bought the house as it was, with the bad roof. Now you're getting the house with a roof about to be replaced and a kitchen floor that's about to be replaced as well.
I took the bus downtown to the escrow office, and we closed the sale. Right after I signed all the papers, I called the airport to see if my flight was going to take off. In those days they wouldn't tell you over the phone. Come to the airport and see, they said. No way, I said. All flights ended up being cancelled that day.
I was dating a guy who grew up in Idaho then. Once the roads were clear of cars, he put on chains and we cautiously drove out on the crunchy snow to pick up some friends to see Sun Ra play at the Fabulous Rainbow. What a lot of saxophones! Sun Ra's band was so big, it may have outnumbered the tiny brave audience that night.
The next day, the snow melted and I went to Florida. I sat on the beach with my sister Gini, scooping up handsful of dripping wet sand and tiny burrowing tellins, talking about men.
spezzatura's LJ in response to her rant about Seattle-area drivers not having a clue how to deal with this frozen white stuff, as opposed to people from practically anywhere else in the country including folks who grew up a few miles north, south, east, or west of here (the ones who grew up west of here lived on the Olympic Peninsula, mostly, not in Puget Sound. If they lived on islands in Puget Sound, they learned how to drive boats at an early age and their driving-cars-in-snow skills are irrelevant to today's sermonette). Since it was a longer and more discursive entry than I usually put into comments, I decided to repost it here....packs of feral drivers...
I learned to drive in Ohio; Glenn learned to drive in Alaska. We had to know how to drive in snow. I used to practice putting my car into a skid and pulling it out again, over and over, on my way to high school, while my carpool passengers giggled insanely. People who grow up here don't have enough time with snow on the ground to practice. It's hard to learn a skill you can only use for six or ten hours every other year.
A billion years ago (okay, 21 years ago), there was a real snowstorm, about a foot of snow, just before Thanksgiving, 1985. It was a smaller city then, after the Boeing bust, before the dot-com boom, and people stayed home.
I didn't; I was buying my first house, and it was due to close that day, just before I was due to fly to Florida to see my grandparents. It was due to close that day, and the seller was putting on a new roof as a condition of the sale, and the roofer left the roof uncovered overnight because he was a doofus who didn't check the weather report, and a foot of snow fell into my kitchen-to-be.
Well, said my friend the attorney, you would have bought the house as it was, with the bad roof. Now you're getting the house with a roof about to be replaced and a kitchen floor that's about to be replaced as well.
I took the bus downtown to the escrow office, and we closed the sale. Right after I signed all the papers, I called the airport to see if my flight was going to take off. In those days they wouldn't tell you over the phone. Come to the airport and see, they said. No way, I said. All flights ended up being cancelled that day.
I was dating a guy who grew up in Idaho then. Once the roads were clear of cars, he put on chains and we cautiously drove out on the crunchy snow to pick up some friends to see Sun Ra play at the Fabulous Rainbow. What a lot of saxophones! Sun Ra's band was so big, it may have outnumbered the tiny brave audience that night.
The next day, the snow melted and I went to Florida. I sat on the beach with my sister Gini, scooping up handsful of dripping wet sand and tiny burrowing tellins, talking about men.
