I’m at work because I don’t want to be considered a weenie, and apparently the ultimate test of unweenieness is to see a Dr. Zhivago- style whiteout as a test of manliness, and not, say, a test of your tires’ ability to find purchase with the pavement.
So, I got up and drove to work because when I moved to Denver, lo those many years ago, I assumed I needed a four-wheel drive to battle the elements. It was, in fact, so long ago that SUVs were not yet considered modern-day locusts feeding on the global environment and were thought to be somewhere between handy and necessary. Somewhere, in concept, between the Zamboni and your basic wooden toboggan.
Still, not really comfortable with the big-car concept, I bought a RAV4 — which is to SUVs what a Toyota Celica (my former car) was to a sports car — knowing it was the anti-Hummer, even though there weren’t any Hummers yet.
Still, it puts you in the middle of the auto-as-macho-statement argument — best stated on those Howie Long Chevy truck commercials in which he asks the guy driving the Ford truck about his “man step” and his heated steering wheel. Is that a manicure, Howie sneers, looking at the guy’s hands gripping the wheel.
I’ve never had a manicure or a heated steering wheel. I don’t even have electric windows. But my wife owns a GPS, which I use whenever I can because I just enjoy the conversation. And I want one that, in a blizzard, will refuse to give directions and say, instead, “What the hell are you thinking? Man up. Go home.”
But no, I get to work, making the 10-minute drive in about, oh, 15 minutes, lamenting, of course, what I could have done with those lost five minutes, when I walk in the newsroom to see Kathy Sabine in the 9News backyard, giving the forecast out in the snow because, otherwise, we wouldn’t know it was, uh, snowing.
I understand there are rules about covering weather. I’m following the first rule here, which is that once you’re committed to an epic storm/blizzard, you can tell the story one of two ways : Run for your lives, or, oops, the wacky weather guys panicked again.
I’m looking out my window in the midafternoon, and I’m afraid it doesn’t look exactly apocalyptic out there or even epic. But the governor did declare a state of emergency. The mayor did shut down city hall. Cherry Creek Shopping Center closed early, meaning, in epic terms, this could be a real issue if you find yourself really, really in need of a pair of designer shoes.
The real problem with snow is that it makes everyone a bad conversationalist. Who wants to hear about other people’s snow stories? (Like, I’m sure you got a foot at your house, but what’s that got to do with my life?) And yet, like Kathy Sabine, I’m committed, so I’ll give you mine, starting with the early years.
I was living in a town in southeast Virginia, where they don’t do snow. There are no snowplows. There are leaf blowers. It’s my senior year in high school, just before exams, and it began to snow. And snow. And snow. And, this being Pat Robertson country, as it snowed some more, we took the apocalypse angle seriously. But what was less clear, being exam time, was what to do — study or, well, not study.
You can guess my choice. But get this: I spent a week not studying, and exams were called off. This is when I developed my ruling theory of life, which I call the runaway-bus theory. Never do anything ahead of time because you might get hit by a bus. Or, yes, a blizzard. My senior year in college, they canceled exams again, this time on account of massive anti-war protests. But you get the idea.
One year, I went to New York for semester break, and it snowed so hard that it shut the city down and cost the mayor his job. I had to drive to my uncle’s in the Bronx, and it was like Shackleton vs. the Antarctic (if you don’t get the reference, that’s why God invented Google).
Anyway, when the city reopened, I had to have chains for my car (my mother’s car, a brand-new yellow Buick) to get over the George Washington Bridge, and, unfortunately, my mechanical ability is something like Tim Geithner’s ability to charm. And all I had to buy the chains with was an expired Shell credit card.
Maybe that’s why, as I began to drive over the bridge, the chains started to unravel. If I slowed down, the truckers (no heated steering wheels) started blasting their horns. If I sped up, the unraveling chains starting pounding away at the beautiful paint job. And here’s the kicker: I had no money, and yet I had to pay someone to take the chains off when I finally got over to Jersey.
I knew the winter business wasn’t for me. But in 1997, I got to Denver, in the year of the great October blizzard, when trees heavy with snow fell over on themselves and when the Broncos had such a tough time getting to the airport that Steve Atwater had to be rescued by snowmobile.
And it was then that I knew I had developed my real talent — snow avoidance. In my many years here, I’ve missed almost every major storm. In that 1997 storm, my wife, a Southern gal I had brought to the foot of the Rockies, was literally trapped in the house, unable even to open the door, scared to think that this was what life in Denver would be like: Chicago on the Platte.
And where was your intrepid correspondent? I was covering the World Series in the year of the Florida Marlins. I was staying in Fort Lauderdale, where I could watch the Weather Channel from poolside while sipping drinks, with those tiny umbrellas. The umbrellas, by the way, were entirely unnecessary.
Epic.
Mike Littwin writes Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-5428 or mlittwin@denverpost.com.
