“Bread and Milk”

Weather-wise (among other wises), this has been a terrible, horrible, very bad winter. Not so much the snow – in that respect, this has been more reminiscent than most recent winters of the those of my childhood, when there was snow cover from December until March. But the cold.

Brrrrrrr. (Grrrrr.)

It’s been below normal, and we’ve had precious few of those mild-for-winter type days when you can almost smell spring.

Me, I just want to see a crocus or two out front, and the forsythia in bloom in the Boston Public Garden, which is just outside my front door.

The snow doesn’t bother me as much as the cold does. What I hate about the snow is when people don’t shovel and the snow turns to hip-breaking ice, and – in second place – when the snow gets crusty, dirty, and stained with dog pee. And I don’t like to drive in it. But mostly I don’t mind snow.

Still, I’d be just as happy if someone up there would issue a cease and desist order for the white stuff.

As of this writing – Friday, February 28th – Monday, March 3rd is supposed to be a snow day. No biggy. Maybe six inches, maybe less.

But snow none the less.

So I thought I’d share this hilarious video that my niece Caroline showed us last week:

Channeling the Blizzard of ‘78

Ah, snow panic.

Since the Blizzard of ‘78, even us hardy New England locals respond to every report of an impending storm by heading to the supermarket to load up on bread, milk, Cheezits, fruit roll-ups, Oreos, cans of Italian wedding soup, and whatever else strikes us will keep us from the Donner Party fate if we get snowed in.

Even folks who weren’t alive for the Blizzard of ‘78 behave as if they’re on Supermarket Sweeps, loading up their carts with anything within grabbing distance. Just in case…

Those of us who actually lived through (and survived) the Blizzard of ‘78 will recall that there actually was a shortage of bread and milk, as stores didn’t get deliveries for a week of so after the storm. Jim and I, along with my sister and her husband, managed to survive on what we had in the cupboard and the freezer. I remember a hot dog meal – perhaps the last time I actually had hot dogs in the freezer – and Kath recalls something we did with canned salmon. (Salmon loaf?)

But even when the bread and milk ran out, we survived.

When the stores were finally restocked, our local had a sign up asking folks to only take what they needed, and to limit their bread purchase to one or two loaves.

The woman in front of me approached the register with a cart filled with bread. She must have had a dozen loaves. I remember that it crossed my mind that that bread would grow moldy before she got to use most of it. (And I, naturally, hoped that this would be the case.)

Mostly people behaved themselves, and I don’t recall any food panic before, during, and after the dramatic and hundred-year event that was the Blizzard of ‘78. (A few years later, I joined a company where a number of data center employees had been stranded. They lived off the vending machines, which they had to break into, and kept the company’s mainframe up and running.)

I have bread, English muffins, and plenty of crackers on which to slather peanut butter. I will pick up some milk pre-storm, so that I can have it in my tea. I can pretty much guarantee that I will not be starving to death any time soon.

But these days we can count on a storm forecast to bring out the inner hoarder, the inner panic buyer in all of us.

“I gotta get the bread and milk. They said snow!”