(The Official Total snowfall not reported at IAD or DCA was measured with a Sear’s Craftsman tape-measure for accuracy and precision, it was four inches deep, dead on. Sears is apparently going out of the retail business and attempting to turn itself into a commercial real estate concern, selling off their old stores. Too bad- they sold good tools. Photo Socotra).
My plaintive whining about this winter’s pervasive, icy grip on our throats resonated with other suffers on the East Coast. It was met with derision from readers in Alaska. Mirth best characterized the comments from correspondents south of Tampa, who thought 85 was just about ideal, temperature-wise.
I was thinking about Key West, and an early start to the daily sporting life, and got a note from Point Loma. He used to live there, assigned to one of the Joint activities that contributes to the raffish combination of Sailors, Pirates and cheerful anarchists on the island:
“Like you, I got up way before dawn, restless, slightly hung-over and decided that it was a good idea to drive down to check on my boat and have a morning drink or two along with a few smokes. I hit the jackpot, finding a progressive open liquor store, and got to talk and get caught up with some old friends from my days in an A-6 Intruder Squadron back on Whidbey Island in Washington State.
Then the snow started, and it got me thinking…
Regardless of weather, the VFW in Key West stays open 24/7. when it was downtown, it was a haven for us stay-behinds during hurricane evacs – you could always find a drink. However, they sold the high ground down by the harbor several years ago and moved into a spot on upper Truman across from the yacht club and Garrison Bight. It was all about the money. I went to a memorial service for one of my guys who died down there back in September last year and it wasn’t the same. Tom Wolfe was right.”
I looked at the words and remembered the tickle of sweat rolling down my back under a tropical shirt of preposterous colors, toes curling in flip-flops and feeling the gentle breeze off the ocean in an open-air bar off Duval Street. Looking out the window at the steadily falling snow, I wished I had done what Point Loma had done- gone out to check on the roads and found a nice working-man’s bar to soak up some drinks before an afternoon spent dozing in my chair.
It was too late to venture out in it, and so I occupied myself with attempting to fit together some of the tales of Mac Shower’s Pacific war, another exercise in imagining myself somewhere else where the Spring is eternal and the breeze off the ocean is always gentle as a lover’s kiss.
By late afternoon, the reports of wrecks on the roads were diminishing as the few who attempted to go to their offices dwindled. The intensity of the snow began to lighten, and it appeared that we had got pretty much all we were going to get, though the temperature was headed for record lows, and the four inches of snow we had received was going to be with us for a while.
Since the major threat vector on the roads around here is the people who are on them, I began to consider alternatives.
Willow was going to open late in the day- Tracy decided to do it after only a private party decided to go ahead with a gathering originally planned to occur in the wilderness of distant Chantilly. Thirty-one diners and the possibility that local residents would want to get out of their little apartments sealed the decision.
Once that decision was made, the banter at the bar, pre-storm, was that everyone ought to come out in the elements to defy nature’s enforced seclusion.
I was inclined to have a bloody mary mid-afternoon, since the cloak of snow was making me a little twitchy, and the snow was coming down hard. But if I was going out, shouldn’t I just have another cup of coffee?
Still, was it worth destroying the Panzer just to go out and have a little fun?
Of course. The cell phone on the table next to my elbow began to chime with the arrival of Instant Messages, and it appeared that the Usual Suspects were of the same opinion. I briefly contemplated a shower and shave and thought better of it.
What I needed was an aloha shirt to wear under my parka and sweater. And a Hurricane Party at Willow.
So I fired up the Panzer and navigated across the ice on Pershing to Quincy and left on Fairfax Drive. It was fun. Everyone made it. Sometimes defiance is the only answer to Mother Nature’s insistence of her irresistible power. Plus, Jasper at the bar has agreed to start stocking diet Schweppes tonic to go with the vodka. Despite the snow, things are definitely looking up. And the food was delicious.
(This is one of Kate Jansen’s elegant dessert creations- it is a caramel-smothered pudding, topped with one of her thin elegant cookies and accompanied by a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Delicious).
Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303