Trump supporters like to call liberals “snowflakes,” suggesting that we are too sensitive and fragile. We in turn call them “deplorables,” because they are so callous and insensitive.
As the first snow fell last week, I was reminded that there really are a lot of snowflakes in Maine, by which I mean people too young or too new to understand that real Mainers don’t freak out every time it snows.
Freelance journalist Edgar Allen Beem lives in Brunswick. The Universal Notebook is his personal, weekly look at the world around him.
TV meteorologists are largely to blame for hyping snow to the point of mass hysteria. For days, state and national news warned of a monster storm sweeping across the country, millions of people in its path, holiday travel plans in chaos, the highways littered with wrecks, airplanes grounded, the entire mid-section of the country paralyzed.
Personally, I’ve stopped paying much attention to weather reports exactly because of such exaggerations. FYI, a 10-day forecast is only right about half the time and I’d be surprised if local meteorologists are even batting .500.
During the height of the bogus blizzard I drove from Brunswick to South Portland to get Carolyn’s car inspected. You can drive anywhere you want to go no matter how bad the weather if you just drive slowly enough. I find 40 mph a very comfortable speed, snow or no snow.
In any event, it’s not the snow and ice that are the problems, it’s other drivers who refuse to slow down and stay in line. I believe it’s a power thing. Macho men in pickup trucks and manic moms in monster SUVs go whizzing by in the passing lane at 65 or 70 mph. I always expect to see them down the road spun out on the median strip and I’m disappointed when I don’t.
Most of these speed demons are driving four-wheel drive vehicles. I bought my first four-wheel drive car almost 20 years ago after renting a Chevy Blazer on an assignment for the Boston Globe to drive unplowed woods roads in search of wolves. I was amazed at how easily the Blazer glided through the knee-deep snow. But the first time I took my new Subaru to Vermont, I slid all the way down a mountain road, ricocheting from snowbank to snowbank. A word to the wise: four-wheel drive helps a vehicle GO in the snow. It does not help it STOP.
You can always tell when a snowstorm is approaching by doing the grocery shopping. Old people and recent arrivals, whipped up by Storm Center and Al Roker, tend to go into panic mode, as if they might become snowbound and starve. I’m 70 years old and I have only been snowbound once in my life and that was during the Nor’easter of 1952. I was 3 years old and my Nana Gibson cooked potatoes in the fireplace until we were rescued.
These days, the prospect of Snowmageddon sends frissons of fear throughout a state that once knew how to live with snow and ice.
The last straw was an email I received from the publisher of the daily newspaper alerting me that my paper might not be delivered if the driving were too bad. It’s bad enough that newspapers no longer bother reporting on sporting events that take place the night before, but delivering today’s paper tomorrow because it’s snowing is simply not acceptable.
We live in Maine. It’s December. It snows. Get over it.
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