The Snow Plows of Mobile Post #28

It’s cold again — low 30s — which is downright unusual for Mobile in December. The kind of cold we get here is the same kind Syracuse knows well: damp, bone‑chilling, the kind that sneaks into your marrow. In Mobile, it drifts in off the bay; in Syracuse, it rolls down from Lake Ontario. Either way, 30 degrees is 30 degrees. And let me tell you, a cold house in Alabama feels no different than a cold house in New York. The only difference is when you step outside — you don’t need the full northern wardrobe of snow boots, wool socks, mittens, scarves, and three coats stacked like Russian nesting dolls.

My first winter in Mobile, on one of those breezy nights, I had what I thought was my first encounter with snowplows here. To explain that, Mobilians need to understand the snowplows of Oswego and Onondaga County.

Up north, snowplows are not the little tractors you see on the evening news. Those are the “starter plows” — fine for states that get a polite dusting. In Oswego County, though, the plows are giants. They roar down the roads 24/7, clearing mountains of snow like it’s their calling. If you’re brave enough to drive in a storm, your best bet is to tuck in behind one of these beasts and let it carve your path.

And the sound! In Syracuse, winter nights are scored by the music of plows: engines rumbling, metal scraping pavement, backup alarms beeping like metronomes. Grocery stores even dedicate parts of their parking lots as snow graveyards, where plows dump their loads. After a while, the racket becomes background noise — as familiar as garbage trucks on a Tuesday morning.

So there I was, one January night in Mobile, tucked in bed, plotting how to plug the drafts in my house. I was grateful that here, “cold” meant I could get by with a medium coat and scarf. I drifted off, smug in my southern luck.

Then I heard it. Engines growling. Metal slamming pavement. Over and over, the unmistakable sound of snowplows. I thought, Oh, just the garbage truck. But as the night wore on, the scraping and beeping continued, and in my half‑dreaming state, I was back in Syracuse, listening to plows clear the streets.

After several nights of this déjà vu, I made a deal with myself: stay awake long enough to solve the mystery. Around 2 a.m., I texted Barry the Biologist — our resident night owl who knows everything — and asked, “Why on earth are there snowplows in Mobile?” Barry laughed. “Those aren’t snowplows. That’s the port.”

Turns out, the sounds were coming from shipping containers being loaded and unloaded a mile and a half away. The engines I heard were the cranes lifting containers. The slam of metal on pavement? Containers being set down on ships, trains, or trucks. The backup beeps? The machines moving from one container to the next. Identical to snowplows.

The sounds had been there all along, but I only noticed them when the cold drafts in my house lined up with my northern memories. Now, I hear them year‑round. And instead of thinking of snow, I wonder: What’s inside those containers? Where did they come from? Where are they going?

Mobile’s winter may not bring snow, but it brings its own kind of magic — the hum of a port city, the rhythm of commerce, and the reminder that even in the South, you can still dream in snowplow sounds.                     

       

A Moment In Time #27

        I was in the kitchen tonite making hot cocoa for Shanon & I, (cappacino for me) to take into our cold living room and watch a Christmas movie on TV and wrap up in blankets.  I was sharing with her about a movie I had watched last night, The Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood.  It took years for me to watch that as the title did nothing for me.  I told Shanon that this movie ought to be mandatory for every girl in her twenties.

        Without spoiling the movie for those who still may want to give it a shot, it personifies a journey we all go through; seeing our parents as human.  As one thing often leads to another, so it was when I began sharing with her the first time I had looked at my own mom and saw her in her wholeness, a child, a teenager, a young mother, a middle-aged mom, and then, though she was only 40, I saw her as an old woman reflecting back on her life.

        We were at Disney World.  Mom and Charlie had   loved to go there and jumped at any chance to take us kids even if it had to happen weeks apart due to schedules.   Chuck and Mike (the two youngest) were nine and ten years old.  My step-sister, Christy, was 12.  I was fifteen.   

        We were passing by an open-air restaurant where a band playing Chuck Mangione music was on the stage.  Mom stopped to watch and the boys were restless to move on.  I waited patiently – inwardly angry that she would be so selfish to stop when she knew how anxious the boys were to explore. But I knew that pushing her would not speed things up so I stood next to her pretending to be interested, all the while keeping an eye on the two boys and waiting for an opportunity to get us moving again.  Finally, the song was over and we started walking away.  Then they began playing Mangione’s song, “Feels So Good.” 

        Mom stopped again to watch and seemed frozen.    I goaded her to keep going until something happened that I will never forget. I saw how mesmerized she was by the music and realized how selfish I had been to not give her this few moments to feed her own soul.  And yes, I mean her soul! 

        As I looked at her, it was as though all time was then and I could see her whole life – beginning to end; her as a child, the youngest of nine, born when her mom was 41 years old, and basically raised by her sister who was ten years older.  Grandmaw was so busy with the drama of the older siblings:  a 33 year old sister in an abusive marriage, pregnant with baby number six and died on her back porch while picking up one of the older kids; Mom's brother who spent a year in the hospital with TB; another brother at war;  mom grew up more as one of the many grandchildren then one of the children, especially once Grandmaw had to help raise Aunt Mary's kids.

        On this day, I saw a lost, lonely, girl always in the background left to figure things out all by herself.  Then there was the teenage Mom, vying for attention, marrying Dad at seventeen, losing her first baby at age nineteen and having her first five kids by age twenty-five – the fifth being me.  Then she was a young lady who, by the time I was born, had been moved all over the United States as a General Electric (GE) wife.  I had thought she was so mature until that moment, when I could see the scared, vulnerable girl, a child at heart, doing the best she could to raise her babies so far from home, with no family nearby, and constantly being relocated each time she tried to settle in.

        Then there was Chuck and Mike – born five and six years after me.  We moved to the dark, cold winter-land of Syracuse, New York only months before Chuck was born.  Again, another major life event in a new state, with no family support.  I remembered how Mom struggled with the weather and the temperament of the people who, in our middle class neighborhood, were far more rough and gruff than Mom was used to.  Her soft temperament and gentle spirit was no match the malicious gossip, bullying and competition that went on in that neighborhood with both adults and kids.

     I saw Mom’s passion for writing songs and knew that this was a defining moment in her life.  Mom could have a conversation with a stranger and then write a beautiful song telling a story that the stranger had shared but could never have articulated it in the way that she did, and one that, otherwise, would have never been told.  People told things to Mom that they typically would not have shared at all.  Mom had a way that made people want to talk to her, perhaps because she was so non-judgmental and made them feel comfortable sharing not-so-comfortable information.

 I saw and felt her years of frustration of being surrounded by people who did not believe in her enough to share in her dreams; older siblings who laughed at her for no other reason than she was their baby sister and they did not have the vision for anything beyond their own narrow scope of the world.

        But the worse part was when I saw Mom as an elderly woman, looking back at her life with regret at the things she could have done but didn’t – simply because she had believed those who told her she couldn't.  It was a transitional moment for me as well, one where I vowed to never, ever, stop Mom from enjoying 'the moment' again.  I didn’t want her life to end with her having regrets.

       

        I saw Mom as a whole person; her inner child, her beauty, pain, laughter,  vulnerability, frustration and her potential – and longing to do more.  I loved Mom more than ever at that moment and I too, didn’t want it to end.  I wanted to stand there all day, listening to “Feels So Good” and watch mom, herself like a child at Disney, mesmerized by music that carried her into her dreams.  I nearly burst out crying – just as I have many times since when I hear that song.  A sweet sadness!  

        When the song ended, Mom snapped back into the moment and continued along as though we had never stopped. The music went on but Mom kept walking.   It was me who dragged my feet now, telling her that we could stay longer and listen to the music.  Perhaps we would get a table and sit.  But now her main concern was to get the boys to The Pirates of The Caribbean, one of her favorite rides. The magic of that moment - as painful as it was sweet - was gone.  Mom had traded it up for more magic moments with her kids in a world where we could continue to dream big dreams for the whole rest of the day.