TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Hell Continues to Freeze Over


Hell Continues to Freeze Over


Patrick Townson (ptownson@telecom-digest.org)
Fri, 19 Jan 2007 18:00:00 CST

I mentioned here about a week ago that Hell, here in Independence, KS
had frozen over with the ice storms of last weekend. Now here we are,
a full week later, ice still over everything in sight. Every day, the
temperature goes up to a little above freezing -- maybe to 40 degrees
when the sun is out, a wee bit of the ice drips loose and begins to
slowly run down the street. Then darkness falls, the temperature goes
back to somewhere between zero or minus one (Tuesday and Wednesday
night) and it all freezes again. My house has been frozen solid with
sheets of ice all over it for a week; the front door has been solidly
locked in ice all week, and the only other way in/out (the back door)
has been all I can use. It is under a sheltered, covered area which
keeps the rain away, and consequently, all the ice from last weekend.
But, there is a catch; isn't there always? Living as I do on the
side of a hill with a very slight incline in the yard, I am confronted
with _solid_ sheets of ice throughout the yard and the sidewalk out to
the street. So, in effect, I cannot go out that way either, except to
let the dog out to 'make his potty' in the back yard. The cats are
all staying inside, and the dog is pretty quick about letting me know,
getting out and coming back inside. _I have not been out of this house
for several days now_, almost all activities in town have been
cancelled all week anyway. With the damn gutter spout on the roof
clogged up, naturally the rain all overflowed last weekend and ran
all over my front porch and the stairs there, thus the front door
is blocked with ice. And no one has been _in the house_ either; the
meals-on-wheels service has been suspended all this week with the
roads between here and Coffeyville (from whence comes the food wagon)
totally iced over although the city and state -- its Tenth Street out
to the city limits, then a state highway -- keep shoveling and
scraping and salting, to no avail. The ice is so impacted it is quite
difficult to work on.

Given my limited ability to walk anyway, the city authorities have
very strongly advised me to 'sit it out', not to DARE trying to walk
(with or without my cane) _anywhere_. Someone did show up last
Saturday afternoon with a huge box of groceries for me, compliments
of the local Episcopal Church; a couple weeks worth of food at least.
Medicare ordered a power wheel chair for me and it will be _so good_
when/if it gets here; it is impossible to tip over on the ice, I
am told, and I can use it for limited (very limited) trips around town
once it arrives, but believe it or not, the highway going up to
Kansas City (the supplier) is also mostly blocked with ice, so I am
out of luck until the electric chair (which gets 25 miles on a single
charge; so I can go all over town and back easily on one charge)
arrives here. The city tried to comfort me on the phone yesterday:
"if you need anything, Mr. Townson, just give us a call or the police,
someone will come out to help you."

We had hoped there might be one or two warm 'spring like' days in this
past week so it would all melt in earnest. But instead, the local
PBS radio station (KOSU out of Tulsa) interuppted their programs many
times Friday afternoon to give a 'weather advisory': Three or four
inches of *new snow* assured overnight Friday into Saturday. At least
our electric/cable lines have stayed in place, meaning my furnace,
microwave oven, refrigerator and such are all working. Last winter was
relatively mild; this year, it is total hell.

PAT

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