And so we have returned to the season of salt engulfed windshields that the only way of ridding them is to sit behind a truck spewing slush, melted snow and other great stuff to hasten the corrosion of your cars underbody while trying to franticly flick the windshield wipers on and off methodically as not to smudge more slat all over your window. Ah the joys of driving behind someone on 2 inches of slush at 75 mph knowing that at any moment this fool may drop his coffee and send hundreds of cars into the ditch to avoid this coffee spilling-spinning car maniac. And so once again I find myself driving very slowly behind a huge snowplow praying that soon he will enter one of those snowplow turnarounds that you always see signs for, but are only used twice a year. Salt pebbles flying smacking your hood and further rusting your POS car known locally as “rusty”, trying to avoid oncoming snowplows as they take up two lanes and remembering the stories of dismembered drivers of vehicles found in half mile increments because they couldn’t gauge how wide the snowplow coming at them really was.
I found myself driving on route 23 west from Catskill to Norwich, NY, in a rather stupid effort to avoid the Thruway and its rather expensive tolls, to see multiple whiteouts, cars in ditches, beautiful Christmas displays accompanying the scenes of nativity outside trailer parks and grand old Victorian homes of the central Catskills, and mainly to drive in the middle of the night to Syracuse from Kingston with no time constraints, Lovely I must say. (The following sentence must be said in black teenager making a shoutout on some teeny bopper hip-hop station.) START NOW- I just wanna make a shoutout to all the crazy brothers who spend thousands of dollars to put up Christmas lawn decorations so the passerby on some obscure road in the middle of nowhere stares at your house for one second. OK STOP VOICE. It is true in fact that I probably would have ignored your house like all the other plain old tract homes along the road, but your decorations did make me slow down from 65 to 63 in an effort to check out the large globe with Santa inside and snow floating around it. I would like to give recognition to these few homes. Route 23 going west on the right side in Davenport, also in Davenport Center, Morris NY you go girl, and finally cheers to the towns of Morris, and Cazenovia for truly being beautiful at night under a silent shroud of virgin snow with your twinkling lamps and abundant candy cane type ornaments. Oh I almost forgot right outside Stamford there is a beautiful driveway al lit up with all sorts of holiday stuff.
Its snowing like mad and then all of the sudden it stops, ah the beauty of a cold front combined with the nasty lake effects of Erie and Ontario. Just in time for Christmas- maybe people will buy more stuff and cause the economic statistics to bring good things for those of us who’s only indicator is gas prices. I have heard that the whole economy is based on these two months of consumer mayhem in the name of some holiday that commemorates nothing. In Bethlehem they rock around the Christmas tree on January 7th I would trust them hardcore Christians more then some suburban housewives who paint ornaments wouldn’t you? Then some dude last week who was some messianic, naturopathic, hippy, organic junky, bandana wearing, weirdo claimed that he wasn’t born this time of year at all but rather it was in the spring. But who can compete with the change of season sales so they figured Easter was that time of year and the winter was slow in business so why not put Christmas smack between New Years and Thanksgiving- throw in some Halloween and Walla a markets dream month.
I must say the moon illuminating the snow fall was quite a sight and made me feel all warm inside kind of like holding hands with some girl your into. Oneonta all lit up and glowing with gentle snow flurries scurrying about was a sight to behold. Passing through Morris, NY brought me into the professional loner dialogue with myself replete with Yiddish accents and old men yelling at each other. Ah being alone in a car for hours on end tends to do strange things to a man.