The Snow Plows of Mobile Post #28

Snowplow in Oswego County - this is not nearly what they often get!

       It’s cold out again, in the low 30’s, which is pretty unusual for Mobile, especially in December.  The one thing that Mobile does have in common with Syracuse is the type of cold – damp and bone chilling!    Here it comes off the bay, and there it comes from Lake Ontario.  Either way, aside from the snow, 30 degrees is 30 degrees.  And another thing, a cold house in Alabama is no different than a cold house in New York.  The difference is when you walk outside; you don’t need that heavy winter wardrobe of snow boots, wool socks, mittens, scarves, and multiple coats.

        It was my first winter in Mobile on one of these cold, breezy nights when I had my first experience with the snowplows in Mobile.  To tell that though, it is crucial that Mobilians fully understand the snowplows of Oswego and Onondaga County.  Watching the news here, we see many tractors with plows moving snow, hence the perception that, that is what a snow plow is.  Those are snow plows but typically the kind that are owned by smaller contractors or individuals – or perhaps in states where they barely get snow.

This was either the storm of 66 or 76.  

There are NO hills on the side of the road.  

 That is pure snow folks!

        Oswego and Onondaga County has the best snow plows in the country.  They are huge and, in spite of the large amounts of the snow, do a great job of keeping the roads as clear as possible.    In Oswego County however, where the snowfall often dwarfs Onondaga County, the plows are out in full force and even when it's not safe to drive, it is never long before a plow comes along to provide your best shot at getting where you need to go if you follow right behind it.  The plows are out 24/7.

        A typical sound in the north during the snowy months is the sound of snowplows – much like the sound of the garbage trucks anywhere.  Then you hear the motorized plow lifting up, the hard, cold metal hitting the snow covered pavement as it moves forward, then backwards, over and over, moving the snow.  Some of the large grocery stores and malls allocate parts of their parking lots for the plows to dump the snow.  It has to go somewhere!  As the plow backs up, the typical warning beeps come on, over and over all day and night.  In the city you can hear it blocks away and eventually it is a background sound that you are no longer conscious of.

        It was a cold January night in Mobile and I was laying in bed plotting the holes and gaps I would be filling in the next day to keep the cold air out.  In my exhaustion, I was thinking how glad I was that the cold ‘stopped there!’ meaning that, though it is cold inside, a light to medium coat and scarf are really all that is typically needed.  I was relishing at how glad I was to be in the south as I drifted off to sleep.

        It didn’t take long, however, to hear the plows; the engines that sounded similar to the garbage truck.  In my drifting state, I thought, “Oh, the garbage truck!”  As I slipped further into that dream state – I could hear the snowplows coming out and then the hard metal hitting the pavement.   Over and over for the next couple of hours, I could hear those plows slamming down, plowing the snow, then backing up and doing it again.  The sound went on all night, all the while, me thinking I was in my old bed in Syracuse.

This is Mobile in the Winter

        The next day, I remembered this and laughed it off as a dream, thinking that those sounds were so embedded into my being that I had just dreamed it.    Then that night after drifting off to sleep, the same thing happened; The engine of the trucks, the plows coming out and hitting the pavement, the snow being scooted, the back-up alarm and then the inevitable clanging of metal as the plow is moving or shaking the snow or moving to the next spot.   After several nights of hearing this in my sleep, I made a deal with myself to force myself awake and get to the bottom of it.                                  

        It was about 2:00 a.m. several nights later when I was finally able to force myself awake.  Now Barry our Biologist – who knows everything – is a night owl and I knew that he and Georgia – his girlfriend – would still be up.     I forced myself out of the sleep to ascertain whether this was a flashback or if it was real.   It was real alright!  But why on earth would there be snowplows in Mobile, a place where school gets cancelled if it snows in North Carolina, and one where I haven’t seen a drop since I’ve lived here.  

        I texted Barry our Biologist and asked what that noise was and shared that it sounded like snowplows.  He was amused as he explained that what I was hearing was the shipping containers at the port on the bay, about a mile and a half away.  The shipping containers are what we commonly see on the back of 18-wheelers or the cargo boxes on trains, only they are coming off the ships to trucks and trains or being loaded on the ships from trucks or trains.  The engines I heard are the equipment that lift the containers.  Apparently this gets done mostly in the middle of the night.  The sound of the plow hitting the pavement was actually the containers being placed on the ship, train or truck.  The back up sound was the machine as it went from container to container.  The sound was identical!

Mobile Shipping Containers at the port

Another view of Mobile Shipping port

        These sounds had been here all along but, being in a new place, I was conscious of the many other new sounds as mentioned in earlier blogs.  These noises only came to the forefront when the weather and conditions (inside the house – cold drafts) lined up with the scenario in the north during snow season.   I am conscious of those sounds all year long now and, rather than think of snow, I wonder, what is in those containers;  where did they come from, and where are they going?

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.