Posted 2/11/2011

LIVING IN GOD'S [SNOWY] COUNTRY:
Or, I Do Not Care For Evacuation Routes!

by Tonia Lorenz, Guest Columnist

Chicago, where I live these days, had a blizzard last week. You may have heard. Friends have been calling me and asking in hushed tones, suitable for enquiring about a death in the family, "How are you coping?"

Here's my answer: Just fine. In fact, the more I reflect on it, the more sure I am that I'm living in God's Country and that Chicagoans are the Chosen People.

We were warned, days in advance, that this snowfall would be one for the record books. So we got ready. I prepared like all sensible Chicagoans did: made sure my three shovels and snowblower were handy; took out the trash; filled the car's gas tank; went to the ATM; and had my eyebrows waxed.

On Monday, the day before the blizzard hit, the parking lot at the local supermarket looked like Woodfield Mall at 7pm on Christmas Eve. Yet everyone was calm and helpful. I bought the essentials for being snowbound: milk, bread, kitty litter, sidewalk salt, flashlight batteries, red velvet cupcakes and Captain Morgan rum.

By Tuesday afternoon, the first snowflakes were beginning to fall, right on schedule. I settled down with a comforter, my laptop computer, a spiked mug of cocoa and a fat little kitten to watch the show.

The blizzard was spectacular. There was something for everyone. Fast-falling snow (definitely not the big fluffy "Charlie Brown Christmas" flakes – these were icy little pellets, like desert sand). Gale force winds (up to 70mph near Lake Michigan, my part of town). Quarter-inch nuggets of hail. Booming thunder. Sizzling lightning cracks. Flickering lights (my place didn't lose power, but it was dicey there for a while). The storm definitely lived up to the hype.

The forecasters, who were eerily precognizant for once, said it would all be over by early afternoon. The sun started to peek out around noon on Wednesday and the snow stopped at 1pm. By 1:15, I looked out my window at the four-foot drifts and saw a cross-country skier zip down the middle of my street. Then a sled. Someone in snow shoes! And finally, a snowmobile.

By 2pm, the street was teeming with neighbors, as we all came out carrying our shovels and began excavating paths where our sidewalks had been a day before. (My snowblower took one look at the height of the drifts and laughed at me for even thinking about it.)

As is usually the case, people were at their best in trying circumstances. Someone digging out his car grabbed a shovel and took care of the last ten feet of my sidewalk. A crowd of neighbors finished shoveling in front of their building and started on their next door neighbor's. A teenage boy came out of his apartment and joined in, because his mother told him to get off the computer and get outside and help people, for goodness sake! Parking lots opened their gates to residents who couldn't find places to put their cars.

A few people with massive four-wheel-drive trucks maneuvered them into the snowy street and circled the block ten or so times, acting as de facto snowplows, since no one knew when the city would get around to clearing the side streets. (Turns out they showed up the next day, just 24 hours after the snow stopped falling.) Camaraderie and bonhomie reigned supreme. As strange as it may sound, it was a joyful day.

I haven't always lived in Chicago, so I always keep tabs on previous places I called home. Lately, it's been a laundry list of disasters:

• Los Angeles, the price of living with you was the occasional earthquake. Every now and then the skies would glow red from surrounding brush fires and people would lead horses down the streets to get them away from danger. The last time I visited, I drove past my old house; there was a horizontal line around the base where the building had shifted on its foundation during recent seismic activity. My Angeleno friends tell me tales about evacuating their homes to escape wildfires and mudslides that sweep away neighboring houses and cars. Geologists say in solemn tones that The Big One is overdue and could happen anytime.

L.A., I love your climate and quirkiness, and I'll always treasure my time with you, but I won't be moving back. It was fun, but your natural disasters are, well, too disastrous!

• New York, self-proclaimed center of the universe: I was tempted to come back to you, really I was! After 9/11, I felt like I needed to be with you, but I just couldn't accept living in a studio apartment that cost more than my two-bedroom Chicago townhome. I always felt protected from the elements when I lived in New York; after all, what storm would dare attack the most vibrant city in America?

Something has changed, though. Climate change made the storms lose their fear. What has it been, eight major snows this winter, and counting? Friends tell me their December trash wasn't picked up until Groundhog Day because the garbage trucks couldn't get through. Tertiary (i.e., third-priority) streets weren't plowed for weeks after the Christmas blizzard. New York, I'll always be tempted to return to the city that never sleeps, but I don't think I'm hardy enough for the kinds of winters you've hosted for the past few years.

• Florida, you're so easy to love. Clean, warm, modern and pretty, in the winters at least, when I'm there. But then there are the summers, with the evil, sultry combination of high humidity and high temps. And those darned hurricanes. Your residents have to buy protective storm shutters for their homes, for the price of a small Toyota. And then they get to evacuate the state! (I've always wanted to see Valdosta, Georgia, but not quite under those circumstances.) Friends tell me about standing in post-hurricane water lines and being interviewed by Anderson Cooper.

Well, that last part, at least, is an incentive to live with you, Florida! But even the smoking hotness that is Anderson Cooper isn't enough for me to choose 120-degree heat indexes, and hurricanes so ferocious that they sheer the sides off high-rises, leaving them open to view like giant residential dollhouses.

Before last week, the last Chicago blizzard of note was in 1999. The one before that, 1979. Before that, 1967. I can live with those odds.

To sum it up: Last week, for the first time this millennium, we had a blizzard. An extraordinary 24 hours of weather, two days of shoveling, and then everything was back to normal. Roads were clear, the airports reopened, kids went back to school, and garbage started being collected again.

No one was ordered to evacuate; in fact, we were told to sit tight and look out for our neighbors.

It made me proud to be a Chicagoan. This kind of natural disaster, I can live with.

Chicago is God's Country, I'm convinced of it.

Now, if you want real drama, disaster and wringing of hands, check back on February 22nd: That's when we have City elections.

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