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This week, I should at the least be questioning, if not ranting against, the ludicrous decision by Mayor Elia and her mathematically challenged advisors to reject a $1 million bailout of our city. Niagara Falls Redevelopment offered to prepay $1 million on contracts for those dilapidated relics of optimism, the Turtle and the Convention Center. And we didn't grab the money and run? If there is a reason, good, bad or indifferent, for this bone-headed call, the city government has failed to share it with citizens. I should be seeing red.
Also, by now I should be frothing at the mouth over the looming coronation of George W. Bush. This depressing electoral process has only been enlivened by the increasingly manic lawsuits filed by Vice President Al Gore loyalists. Bush lawsuits, on the other hand, are too predictable to be amusing: Throw out any votes that would lose Florida and the election for George. (But do include absentee military ballots that a Republican hack spent some creative time with.) The prospect of such a gnat-brained twit as president should have the red mist swimming before my eyes.
Instead, I'm seeing white. Vast drifting mounds of white. Whirling fat flakes of white. More snow than I've seen in my life and, Lordy, it ain't over. That makes me see red.
I admit, friends warned me when I announced I was moving to Western New York about the terror known as Lake Effect Snow. Such a lilting euphemism for constant blizzards. My friends were justified in their doubts about my fortitude: After 12 years in southern Florida, I wore a sweater when the temperature dropped to 70.
"I was raised in Michigan," I argued. Surely those hardy genes that compel thinking adults to live in places where Winter Wonderland is a state motto, those genes would kick in when I settled in north country. Give me a couple of cold months and I'll be a happy Eskimo, I insisted.
That was five years and four winters ago. Those winters weren't horrendous. Actually, I remember the first snowfall of my first winter here with pleasure. I walked among the diamond-like flakes, packed a couple of snowballs, then went into my cozy home and had a hot toddy. The next day, Western New York awoke to a cloudless blue sky and began to dig out with neighborly good cheer.
I can handle these polite snowstorms. They may roar in, but they arrive at intervals, not every single day. What I cannot deal with is a plague of snow, 40 days and 40 nights of white menace. It's not even winter yet and we've had half the average yearly snowfall. Where is global warming when you need it?
I have no horror stories from Storm 2000. My insignificant other and I were at the airport on Nov. 21 waiting to fly to Florida when two feet of snow canceled all flights. Disappointing, but we had hopes of getting out the next day, foolish as that seems in retrospect.
On the trip home, we avoided the travel trap of Route 33, thanks to a young man, now in my prayers, who walked up the lines of grid-locked autos on the entrance ramp to advise motorists that 33 was a parking lot due to about a hundred smashups. Our Good Samaritan guided my man as he backed up onto Genesee Avenue and we embarked on a two-hour ordeal to get home, a trip that normally takes 20 minutes. Still, we were not cocooned in a car for nine hours, as a friend and his wife were, watching the fuel gauge edge toward empty. Had we been in that situation I know in my heart of hearts that either the love of my life or I would be a homicide statistic.
We finally were able to fly to Florida on Thanksgiving Day. As we sat in the sun room of our friends' home, we smugly watched The Weather Channel report more LES blowing across Lake Erie. We congratulated ourselves on surviving, assuring ourselves the worst was over.
Wrong. The snow machine may not be dumping a ton in 12 hours, but it has been spitting a good bit every day. And LES is sneaky. It can be clear in Niagara Falls while a full-fledged nor'easter rages in Amherst. LES might zip north, meander south or just sit there. For hours.
I am fortunate in that I don't have to battle the elements. Due to a clumsiness bred in the bone and a trio of slovenly carpet installers, I tumbled down a flight of stairs, fracturing my pelvic bone. My current mode of walk resembles a toddler who has only recently discovered his land legs: slow and unsteady. On two good legs, I used to fall on my butt at least once a winter--one noteworthy year, I fell seven times--so my recent sojourns to the post box are an invitation to a hip replacement.
My breadwinner, however, does have to deal with ice-slicked highways, snow-packed side roads, swirling whiteouts and the chance that our recently purchased, previously owned, maddeningly temperamental auto will decide to wrap itself around a tree. (It has a computer system that has taken to flashing the enigmatic message: "Service ride control." Who knows what that car will get up to?) And we have to face the white peril for a minimum of four more months.
On Thanksgiving morning, my sister jettisoned her usual perky "Happy Thanksgiving" greeting for the sincerely baffled, "Why do you live there?" Even to residents of Michigan, host to at least one howling blizzard a year and the obligatory April ice storm, Western New York winters are a tad appalling.
I'm sure many of you reading this find my whining about the weather tedious. "If you can't stand the epic snowfalls, the bone-numbing cold, the day after day of gray skies, get out of Western New York, wimp," you may be thinking. So am I.
But then I'd miss the shenanigans of Niagara Falls non-movers and non-shakers and the lack-wit ideas they come up with. I'd never know if AquaFalls will prove to be the most idiotic development idea of the decade. The proposed balloon trips over the Falls would give the yet-to-be aquarium a run for that title and will surely win if a couple of tourists plummet to their deaths. And how about that 27 percent tax increase? Will it drive out everybody left in the city? I have to stick around to find out.
Besides, Mayor Elia would miss me.