By 
A Tunnel of White
“Shoveling’s good for your character,” my brother wrote in an e-mail yesterday after I told him I had been scooping snow off our sidewalk.
Using a yardstick this morning, I measured 6 inches in places, nearly 8 inches in others.
Although I had pre-shoveled our walk yesterday, it had 5 more inches on it. Once you get going it’s hard to stop, so I cleared off the neighbor’s walk as well. The driveway is next. If snow gets walked on or driven on, it’s impossible to shovel it. Ya gotta get there early.
Yesterday afternoon, city crews spread salt (or whatever chemical compound they use.) And this morning, more of the red grit covers the street. That’s the city’s way of saying, “Ain’t gonna plow.” Which is no surprise. While they treat the primary routes of travel, they don’t do as much as they could to make the streets safe. Because of money (or lack thereof), they skimp; side streets and even heavily-traveled intersections can turn to sheer ice and that makes driving miserable. According to an article in The Gazette, last week’s ice storm used $12,000 of their $21,000 budgeted for snow-removal material.
One old friend who has passed on, but had seen many winters, described the city’s attitude toward snow removal as, “God put it there; God will take it away.”
The upside to this storm is that it’s relatively warm, 30-degrees right now.
Meanwhile, across the state, the scroll at the bottom of Channel 12 out of Wichita shows that churches are closed across the western half of the state: Rozel, Hutchinson, Lyons, Nickerson, Otis, Norwich, Oakley, Park City, Wichita. On Channel 9 out of Topeka, the scroll announces closings in Goff, Woodbine, Council Grove, Auburn, Big Springs.
Here’s another photo that Dave took yesterday: Winter, Country Road.