Snow

Greater Washington, DC, has been under two feet of snow since Saturday, and another foot is predicted for tonight. The temperatures have been hovering in the upper 20s and low 30s. The city, needless to say, is not handling it well. All government offices and schools closed even before the snow started on Friday, and remain closed. The subway was completely shut down all weekend, and above-ground stations didn’t open until this morning, with trains, which normally come every 3-5 minutes during rush hour, running as much as a half hour apart. The streets are a mess – practically nothing has been plowed, at least not in a way that is actually helpful, and for some incomprehensible reason, there is no evidence of anyone doing the most obvious thing: spraying salt.

I grew up in a cold place. The snow typically started falling in late October, would stick by mid-November and the ground would remain covered until at least late March, with a fresh dusting of an inch or two falling every few days. Temperatures in the single digits Fahrenheit were commonplace. More significantly, though, it was a place where both modern technology and a Western work ethic and sense of responsibility were in short supply in the best of times. So how did we do it? The subway – the city’s only piece of public infrastructure that worked almost flawlessly – ran on schedule regardless of the weather. The rest of the transit system didn’t, but then, it never did. The buses and street cars were antiquated, unsafe, overcrowded and filthy, but they stumbled along every bit as well (or poorly) in driving snow and frigid cold as they did on a beautiful summer day (itself a rare occurrence). Not once do I remember a complete cancellation of service due to weather.

Four-wheel drive was unheard of outside the military – the few people who did own private automobiles, my father among them, typically drove locally built replicas of 1960s Fiats: rear-wheel drive, 60 hp engines, skinny bias-ply tires and no safety features to speak of (power-assisted brakes were an extra-cost option; ours didn’t have them). Yet not once did my father refuse to drive because of the weather. He would take the battery out of the car and carry it indoors at night (giving himself permanent back problems in the process) lest it would be dead the next morning because of the cold, but not driving did not occur to him. Sometimes, he had to dig the car out with an ice pick, and it took a while, but off it went eventually down the slushy street, fishtailing and spinning its tires.

I do not remember seeing the streets being plowed. I am sure they were, but I cannot imagine it being done efficiently. Nothing else in that society and that system ever was, and the idea of the government, at any level, providing a decent service to its citizens without being bribed, cajoled, or threatened from above, was anathema to the very way the system worked. So while I am sure snow plows disrupted traffic in the center of the city regularly, I would bet money the streets weren’t any cleaner for it.

So how did we do it? How did we not only function, but took the miserable cold, snow and filth in stride every winter? Why is it that masses of people were absent from work regularly, but never because of the weather? Is it simply a question of being used to it?