Derailing my train of thought

On my way to work a couple of mornings ago, a trip that normally takes about ten to twelve minutes, I encountered conditions that tend to confound the drivers in this area. A light dusting of snow had fallen. Lacking countermeasures, we all drove over each other's tracks which became more slippery with each passing vehicle. Intersections were positively dangerous. Yet not many people got in trouble, because they drove with extreme caution. The one or two who spun out were driving light, fast cars, or at least they were when they started out.

And then there was the train. A four-headed monster with about 150 cars, traveling around 15 miles an hour. This was the second train in two days. The previous day, however, the train was shorter, and the time was around noon, which I regard as preferable to 7:45 a.m. when you need to make it to work by 8. This train, however, stopped on the crossing for five minutes, and since I was the first in line, I had no choice but to observe the rusty side panels and the insignia of the companies within my view.

There must be some law here. Let's see how it might be formulated.

1) The speed of the train at the crossing is inversely related to the urgency of your mission.
2) The amount of snow that falls, multiplied by the number of cars using the roads during that time period yields a number which expresses the scale of certainty that you will be late for whatever you need to do.
3) Preferred times for rail traffic are during morning and evening rush hours.

I think this last one is so because when they run trains at night, they are bound to get more complaints about disturbing the peace than if they run them during the day. And it's obviously much safer during the day, because motorists can see the trains coming. On the other hand, in our city, trains run night and day, so perhaps this rule needs more precise formulation.

It always amazes me how close to the railway right-of-way people build their houses. At a local crossing (when I was a kid I used to think those big crossing signs read "Rail Crossing Way"), there is a house that can't be more than ten feet from the wigwag, which has the World's Most Annoying Bell that pounds continuously and can be heard for about two blocks whenever a train comes. The people who live there must have to strap down the TV and pick the pictures (or the plaster) off the rug. But I bet they got the place for a really good price.

Ah, but there's nothing quite like trying to puzzle out the graffiti on the boxcars and tank cars as they crawl across your field of view, since you're the one driver who couldn't make it across the rails before the bar descended. You may not make sense of this, but you have a feeling that it's the last protest against the totally surveiled society. Is this the handwriting on the wall?

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it

-- Omar Khayyam

There's snow way around it...

Today's snowfall put new meaning into the second syllable.

It was one of those heavy, wet snows that come when it's not terribly cold. The stuff clumped and layered over the tarp on the car shelter that I had constructed this summer and reinforced with chicken wire this fall in anticipation of one of those heavy, wet snows that come...

When I came home tonight, I saw that the center peak of the car shelter I made out of those thin metal tubes of a former dining tent had collapsed down onto J's car. I got out a stepladder and a rake and removed as much of the snow as I possibly could. By the time I finished, the general roofline was flat, but at least not sagging onto the car.

This, of course, means that any further snows will simply repeat the process. And on the 50 degree days that are forecast to follow later this week, the water will pool in the tarp, and flow down through the slits that I had to put in it this summer when it rained and remained undrained.

A real, honest-to-gosh car shelter would have cost upwards of $800, which is money that only the government has at this point. So I'm forced to consider how I am going to cope with having a saggy, baggy tarp that has to be harder to shovel off than the car would be if I just took the whole thing down. But such is the problem with designing for assisted living.

There may yet be hope. This weekend, weather permitting, I shall betake me to the local domicile improvement emporium in the hope of finding structural reinforcements. A couple of two-by-fours artfully fastened by plywood braces should do it, wouldn't you say?

Winter is a skate-freeze zone.

All this layering of snow, ice, rain and sleet that we're having today in southern Ohio puts me in mind of my early years in Toronto, where you could count on snow (because we were sitting on the north end of a Great Lake).

Toboggan. Toboggan comes from two Micmac words (or Algonquin, depending on the internet source), probably meaning "tow' and "bogging", as in "I hate towing this sled uphill. It's always boggin' down. Here! It's your turn." (The native peoples were noted for saying a great deal in very few words.) Ultimately, the tow-person would try toboggan (Noo Joizy or Noo Yawk infinitive form) with the passenger person to get him or her to drag the heavy, icy thing back to the top of the hill so they could have another thrilling six-second slide.

One winter Tronna had a blizzard that deposited snow half-way up our front door, itself elevated by a porch that was about four feet tall. Dad diligently got out and shovelled the front steps, building a huge pile that eventually came to about the height of the front door. On this, OB and I sledded, tobogganed and generally launched ourselves into space.

Someone took movies of the entire act, so it's much easier to remember that OB and I had snowsuits with snow helmets that had earlaps that were made of the scratchiest available material. I think they sold this same liner to the quartermaster at the cadet corps in our high school to make uniforms. At any rate, these helmets were tied under the chin, usually by a parent in such as manner that almost precluded its removal after the events of the day were over.

The other Great White North experiences were (when we were older and more self-reliant), skating at the public rink a couple of blocks away, and sliding down the huge hill at the High School a couple of blocks away. And if that failed, there was a lesser hill in the public school yard across from our house. All very convenient and alluring.

Ah! The odor of wet mittens and scarves that were redolent of the stockyard. Even more rank was the scent of the kids who vigorously played hockey on the public rink despite the prohibition and the presence of a boarded rink on the same site, as they sat smoking, swearing and impressing no one except me in the heated change room, with its memorial carvings of initials in the wooden benches. Seemed to me those guys were permanently on the bench. I only saw them on the ice in their boots, walking home. But they stuck their sticks vertically in the snowbanks as they entered the smokehouse change room, so I, for one, believed heartily in their athletic prowess.

There wasn't much worse than getting snow in your boots and having to walk home, except, perhaps, getting snow down your skates, and continuing to circle the ice to the scratchy 78 rpm rendering of "The Skaters' Waltz" on a single loudspeaker despite the obvious chilblains developing in your unprotected toes. After all, skates in those days were unforgiving leather boots with long, fat laces that would break at the slightest sign of strain. Not like those pampered hockey players personal form-fitting boots that let them play barefoot.