Another Day in the Neighborhood
I spent a solid week home alone. Didn’t see another human being. When at last the icy weather eased, I made a beeline for the library to stock up on reading material for the next phase of the freeze. I announced to the librarian that she was the first person I’d seen face to face in seven days. She smiled and told me I wasn’t the first patron to say that.
Post office, Walmart, Eureka Market, Harts, and I felt ready to be snowed in again. Almost. First, I attended an overdue music jam. Joyful music and much needed companionship. Musicians shared their winter stories—the fiddler concluding Arkansas neighbors are better than anywhere else he’s ever lived—and he’s been around. Then, back home for round two.
Days later, when the temperature finally promised to stay above freezing, my daughter determined she’d visit me. The paved roads were clear, and my county road appeared fine—just wet dirt. But appearances can deceive. A third of the way up the incline to my house, my daughter’s 2-wheel drive minivan ceased to move forward. The glistening that suggested moisture, was, in fact, a thin sheet of ice covering the entire road. No traction for tires. Or feet. And the car battery was dead.
She called me. And being her mother, what did I do? I walked downhill to her car. Slowly, in the ditch by the side of the road where the ice had not formed. Where the snowmelt was running and I had to walk on an angle like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I almost turned back a few times, knowing this was not just a fool’s errand, but an idiot’s demise. Especially an idiot at the tail end of her seventh decade. But at the halfway mark, it seemed safer to keep going downhill than to go back up.
Crossing six feet from the ditch to the minivan almost killed me. But I caught myself on her door handle and got in. (As did Tootsie the Wonder Dog.) Looking out the window, I could see there was no going back—nothing for me to grab onto.
Suddenly a giant municipal roadgrader approached from behind. It was four times the size of the minivan, with tires as big as polar bears. The “passenger side” tires wore heavy chains and rode in the ditch. Still, this mechanical brontosaurus couldn’t make it up the icy incline. The driver backed down the hill and began putting chains on all the tires. He hadn’t acknowledged us.
So I called my neighbor, who arrived in a 4-wheel drive pickup truck. A couple other locals joined us in their off-road 4-wheeler. My neighbor slowly cracked through the ice between the ditch and the car with the heel of his boot, used bare hands to scoop dirt and leaves from the ditch to put onto the icy crack he’d just made, and helped me back to the side of the road. Tootsie and I watched as our neighbors and a municipal employee disappeared downhill around the bend, in a community effort to get my daughter’s car jumped and back to the blacktop road so she could drive home. My pooch and I were alone for a while, but no longer worried.
The 4-wheeler returned first and gave Tootsie and me a ride home. And my neighbor called to make sure I’d gotten a ride. I assured him I had and thanked him profusely. He said, “That’s what neighbors are for,” and insisted I call again if the need arises.
My fiddlin’ friend hit the nail on the head.