Synchronicity

Synchronicity

I went to the gym today. It was Friday and I try to make it there on Fridays along with Mondays and Wednesdays. I'm working on making these treks a habit. Hopefully it's working. It's not my most favorite activity but it's one that I know is important. So I soldier on...

So I'm at the gym and trudging along on the ol' treadmill, bumping up the speed from time to time to make sure I'm not getting lazy, eyes half-way watching the TV that was in front of me and tuned to the Weather Channel. There was the usual pair of commentators in front of the camera, a guy and a girl, pointing to the weather map. I noticed that the lady half of the pair was wearing boots. I wondered about that, knowing that there was probably a zero chance of any snow or slush in the studio. But perhaps her wardrobe choice might have been dictated by the big story of the day.

Yes, as you may have guessed, the story of the day, this day, was the big snowstorm beginning to pound the northeast.
It's name was Nemo.

As an aside, when did they start naming winter storms? Wait a minute while I google that...

OK gang, here's the scoop. Naming winter storms is apparently a marketing ploy by the aforementioned Weather Channel! The National Weather Service is not happy about this new practice and has advised it's forecasters NOT to follow along, but their admonition is apparently falling on mainly deaf ears. The media has latched onto the practice and is promoting it. So... This storm is named Nemo.

If you haven't pictured a little orange-and-black animated fish by now you must have been living in a cave for the last decade.

Anyhow, so I'm plugging along on the treadmill, watching the weather lady in her shiny black boots pointing to the giant mass of blue and green grinding its way north by northeast on the map behind her. Interspersed from time to time the channel would go to a remote shot somewhere in the soon-to-be affected area and there was the mobile troops from the Weather Channel out there, wearing their logo-emblazoned parkas and yammering about the upcoming cataclysm. At least that is what they seemed to be implying – I wasn't really listening. Good old Jim Cantore, the erstwhile franchise symbol and point man for the channel was there, of course. Seems he's always out there in the thick of things where the weather's the worst and wind's the fiercest. Unfortunately, while I was watching, the snow was yet to arrive and Jim was being forced to point to a yardstick which was poked into the ground and indicate how high they were expecting the snow to accumulate. It was actually a bit laughable watching their ace reporter pointing to a stick.

Poor Jim.

As I'm watching this almost comical charade play itself out on the television, I'm also listening to my mp3 player. I'm a hell of a multi-tasker! I've loaded down a number of rousing classic rock songs to help me forget my efforts at the gym and to help me keep moving. And don't ya know it, the next song that rolls into my earphones is “Go Your Own Way” by Fleetwood Mac.

And the song, along with the soon-to-be-blizzard on the TV, almost made me stumble on the treadmill. For you see, that song, a really good single from the 1976 album “Rumors” and vocalized by Stevie Nicks had, in my mind, taken me back to ANOTHER blizzard a long time ago.

Let me explain.

My wife and I had married in 1972 and moved into a brand-new mobile home. This mobile home was planted in a park about 8 miles east of the town where I grew up in and where we both worked. We'd been married about 6-and-a-half years when January 26, 1978 rolled around.

We both drove to work that day, her to an office at a manufacturing facility on the west side of our home town and me to an insurance office headquarters in the north part of town. The news that morning was ominous and warning of a heavy snow storm bearing down on us. We were starting to become a bit concerned. Later that day when the wind really started to blow and the snow started coming down in earnest, both of our employers dismissed their staffs early. We'd made some contingency plans earlier and had decided that, if the weather got really bad, instead of trying to make the 8-mile trip back to our trailer, we'd make the one-mile trip to my dad's house and see how the storm progressed from there. He had several spare bedrooms and I knew he could put us up if we couldn't make it home that evening.

The news called that storm “The White Hurricane”. The winds gusted to 80 miles per hour and the barometer crashed to record lows. The snow came down like a vertical avalanche and then the winds took it and piled it in ever increasing drifts. It buried cars, blew out power and killed 51 Ohioans. It was probably the strongest and worst winter storm to ever hit Ohio. It was eventually categorized “a severe blizzard”, something that rarely if ever occurs in these parts.

My wife and I made it to my dad's house, but not easily. I've never ever driven in anything like that, either before or since. Visibility out the windshield was close to zero with the snow absolutely pelting down and the wind howling and carrying it sideways. And what I remember as the weirdest part, the day started out quite warm for January, creepily warm and very still, as if the weather gods were holding their breaths before blasting out the blizzard. The temperature dropped 30 or more degrees within an hour and the storm was then upon us.

We were extremely glad to be in my dad's sturdy brick ranch and watching the howling blast out the windows and not out in it.

We eventually ended up spending 4 days or so out there. I remember about the second or third day my brother talking himself out of a traffic ticket for riding his snowmobile right through our city's downtown. He was on a grocery-and-cigarettes run for those of us stranded in the house and decided, since everything was snow-covered, to take a detour through the middle of town to “check things out”. Luckily the police had more pressing matters to take care of, so a quick warning was all they gave him.

So there we were for four days, hunkered down, waiting for the plows to come through, waiting for the weather to clear up a bit, waiting, waiting. And while we waited, we played games, talked, watched TV and listened to music.

My brother had his 8-track stereo outfit in the family room in the basement, so we ended up down there a lot of the time. Yes all my young readers, an 8-track. That was the pinnacle of music technology at that time, so don't sneer.

His selection of music seemed to be somewhat limited for some reason, but the one cartridge that he really liked listening to was that doggone “Rumors”. So we must ended up having listened to that one 15 to 20 times. Or more! It got so I could almost hear the music while I was asleep. Maybe I even could! He might have been playing it even then!

Anyhow, our exile at my dad's house finally came to an end and we all went back to living our lives again. Our trailer was still there, albeit dangerously low in fuel oil. Dad and I had to cart some diesel fuel from a nearby truck stop to keep us going until our fuel oil delivery man could get through the drifts to our park. We lost all our house plants to the cold, but we survived and went on with our lives relatively unscathed.

So here I was again watching another blizzard tearing into the country and again listening to Stevie Nicks singing the 1977 hit “Go Your Own Way”.

And I realized that everything is cyclical. Everything that goes around, comes around if you wait long enough.

But this time it was someone else who would have to hunker down, who would have to watch the howling snow out their windows and bide their time until they could emerge from their refuges and blink at the newly-fallen snow.

So I hummed the Fleetwood Mac song on the way to work this afternoon, remembering, remembering, thinking of the past all those many, many years ago and thanking my lucky stars that the blizzard was over there this time and not over here.

“Loving you

Isn't the right thing to do

How can I

Ever change things that I feel?

If I could

Maybe I'd give you my world...”