Temperatures dropped near zero last week, and the wind made it feel like a hundred below’even colder if you climbed a giant hill at Pine Knob looking for a snowboarding competition. You know, the one you were supposed to photograph for next week’s edition of the Clarkston News? But I don’t know who would do a nutty thing like that. It was cold.
It snowed last week, too, and the wind blew and the roads were slippery.
I know this for a fact. I saw it on TV.
I was parked in front of the tube after a long day, and I saw a newsperson broadcasting live from a bridge stretching across I-75. His long black coat whipped in the wind, but the scarf tucked under his chin prevented the poor man from freezing to death there on the spot. With very professional control over his chattering teeth, the man directed my attention below the bridge, and I could see it for sure ? it was snowing and the road did look slippery.
I was so grateful the TV news producers forced that man to the overpass so I could see the freeway for myself. I certainly had no idea that Michigan roads could get snowy and slippery in February. I’m awful glad one of our local stations finally broke the story.
And then, while that frosty man stood there in the wind and blowing snow to warn me about driving too fast’even if I did have an SUV’a big orange blur sped past.
Yes, it was true! Snowplows were out snowplowing, and salt trucks were out salting. I saw it on TV. One plowing guy with a moustache’I think they all have a moustache’climbed down from his truck to provide viewers with some first-person testimony.
‘Yeah, snow’s been pretty heavy in places, but, ya know, we’re doing the best we can out there to get the roads cleaned up and we’ll be out workin? most of the night, but we’re keepin? up with it pretty good, right now.?
Oh thank heaven. I was worried, really worried, those guys would finally decide they were tired of snowplowing in their snowplows and salting in their salt trucks. I was afraid the whole lot of them would pack up their swim trunks and head on down to Phoenix, Arizona. I’d be left to plow the streets myself. What would I do? I don’t know how to make a snowplow plow, for Pete sake.
But they came to work, thank heaven. I saw them on TV.
And then a different reporter appeared on the screen. Behind him, yes, YES, a mountain of salt as tall as that cold Pine Knob hill.
Oh sweet relief’once I realized I was not in immediate danger of salt-truck driver abandonment, I was struck with a fresh terror. What if, I thought, the guy in charge of salt was from Peru?
Isn’t it hot down there? What if he doesn’t know we need salt during a Michigan winter?
Or what if he was too busy looking for a deal on a condo in Phoenix and forgot to even order the salt?
But there he was, showing the salt. So if you missed the special report, it did snow last week, and it was cold. But the snowplows were plowing and we have salt. I saw it on TV.