Winter Storm

Last week we had a winter storm hit our area. It wasn’t as severe as what hit Arkansas, but it was still pretty nasty. Monday morning we woke up to a freezing cold house…yes our heat decided to quit the day we were expecting a huge winter storm. It wasn’t going to be fixed until 2-3 furnace guy time. I translated that to person waiting on heat to be fixed time and figured it would be 4-5. I headed over to Jim and Sharon’s to spend the day in central heat while Jay and Cade were at school. I knew the storm was coming, but figured I’d have plenty of time to make it home.

Of course that’s not what happened. The storm hit so fast the roads became very dangerous almost instantly. I called Jay because they had about 30 minutes of school left and he told me to stay put. He could see the cars having trouble on the road in front of the school and he didn’t want me out in it. He said he’d try to come get me later on. A few minutes later he called me back to tell me that he had to go help Tom, the head of the bus barn, because 2 buses were in the ditch. I waited and waited and finally he called back. One bus was out and he was headed to the 2nd bus. Cade was stuck in the afterschool program and they wanted to close it at 4:15. We didn’t know what to do. Then at 4:30 Jay called back again to tell me that the guy went to put the new part on the heater and broke it. We were going to be without heat that night. But the good news was they were taking all the kids on the bus back to the school so we didn’t have to worry about them throwing Cade out since no one was there to pick him up yet.

This is where I would’ve loved to have been a bird flying over the elementary witnessing the chaos that ensued. We are in the middle of building a new elementary so parking is a nightmare to begin with. Then when you add in deep ditches, narrow road and frantic people it makes it worse. Our church happens to be diagonal from the school so Jay parked there and walked to the school to collect our child. Along the way he encountered several things….

For starters a bus was starting to slide off in a ditch. There were kids on the bus. With all of the cars sliding off the road and the position of the bus it was much safer to leave the kids on the bus. One of the ladies living across the street from the school didn’t agree. She was standing on her front porch screaming. Jay has imitated it for me several times….the only thing he could really make out in the ramblings was Bus 17 and Dr R (referring to the Superintendent). Apparently she thought they should take the kids off of the bus or something like that. Jay said when the kids got off the bus some of the smaller ones looked a little shook up….not sure if it was from the bus sliding off or the fact there was a crazy lady screaming on her porch across from the school.

After helping with the bus he walked farther and saw a lady needing help scrapping her windows. It was Cade’s old pre-school teacher, which makes the story funnier. Jay felt sorry for her because she had a little bitty scrapper tackling ¼ inch ice. He stopped to help. While Jay was chipping away he thought he could hear a kid screaming. Finally he asked the lady if she could hear a kid crying or something. She just smiled and said no. Jay worked a little longer and then realized the screaming was coming from her car. He said “I think it’s your kids that are crying”. She said “oh, maybe it is”. I laugh every time I think about it.

Then Jay started for the school again and this time he came upon another lady who was stuck in the ditch. Jay still had his heavy duty ice scrapper in his hands so he told the lady he was going to put it in her front seat until he could get her pushed out. Jay worked, got the lady out of the ditch and guess what her thanks was. She just drove off with his ice scrapper in her front seat. Again, I laugh every time I think about it.

Finally Jay made it to the school and got Cade collected. Cade ended up spending the night with Lyle and Jania, I stayed with Jim and Sharon and poor Jay ended up at home. After all the good deeds he did during the day he still headed to our home, with no heat, to keep a fire going so our pipes wouldn’t freeze during the night. Luckily he was able to come and get me early the next morning (roads were in horrible shape) and we had heat by about 2:00 pm. I don’t think I’ll forget his storm for awhile…..either will Jay.