Pre-Halloween Nor'easter: Mother Nature Cooks Up Heavy Snow, Gusty Winds, and a Perfect Storm of Misery.

I returned home from Seattle -- to this!

My wife Barbara is smarter than I am. She stayed in Seattle a couple of weeks  longer to help care for our new grandchild number 10, a healthy baby girl, Talula.

Dumb me, on the other hand,  came back to our home in Worcester, Mass just in time for a vicious, ghoulish, October, pre-Halloween Nor-easter.

With Barbara still in Seattle,  I was home alone and unsupervised -- for me, never a good idea. My son Jon, always the adult, stepped up and assumed responsibility for me.

On the day the storm was to hit, I was due at his house for grandson Aidan's 9th birthday. "You don't want to be driving in this storm, " Jon said to me.  "Come down early and stay overnight.  It's the smart thing to do."

Good kid that I am, I do what daddy says.  By following orders, I avoided driving in the storm and enjoyed Aidan's party.  Instead of being in the middle of the storm, I was safely out of it at Jon's house in Berkley, Mass., which was barely touched.

But  radio and TV accounts said that  Worcester, where we live, was hit especially hard. A combination of high winds and  heavy, leaf-clinging snow had sent trees  toppling all over the city, crashing onto  roofs, snapping off utility poles, and causing  massive power outage. Talk about scary!

On Sunday afternoon, the day after the Saturday storm of October 29, I headed for home with heavy forebodings.  Approaching Worcester, the roads weren't bad and traffic was moving almost normally. Turning onto the hill to our home, I saw some trees down but no real damage.  Maybe it won't be so bad, I thought.

Then I turned the corner and saw our house.  It looked like the Nor'easter had zeroed in on it. The yard was a disaster.  A large limb was on the corner of the roof and a detached cable dangled from the house. Power lines were down on the front lawn. Tree limbs were everywhere.

In the entire neighborhood, our house was hit the hardest --  by far.

What did I do to deserve this?

That's what I was thinking in the photo above, with the mess behind me.  The photo was taken by a neighbor, who had come by to commiserate. I asked her to take a picture so nobody could say that I was making this up.

One of our two cars was imprisoned in the garage.  Thank goodness we have two cars. Garage openers are a great convenience but when the electricity goes out and you can't open the garage door, it's hell.  Just ask my neighbor Billy.  He had to smash his garage door to get his car out. 

Also, not surprisingly, no power.  It's amazing how much impact this has on your life. Suddenly, just like that, your home is no longer livable.  It is dark, cold, and eerily silent.  The telephone, TV, internet, and refrigerator are all dead. I couldn't call anyone or watch the news or listen to the radio or read or check my e-mail. All I can do  is sit there shivering and feeling miserable.

No way was I going to spend the night alone in that house. I got in the car and made a beeline for my sister Ruby's house in Oxford.  But she didn't have electricity either.  So the two of us ended up at her son Glen's house nearby, who by some miracle did have power.

On Glen and Patty's front landing, I stood with droopy shoulders and sad, imploring eyes. In a lost-soul voice, I said, "I'm cold, hungry, alone, afraid, and don't know what to do. Can you help?"

"Come in," Patty said with a laugh.

I was just in time for supper. (This is something I am good at.)  Patty had made a veggie stew and she and hubby Glen, their two kids, Logan and Julianna, my sister Ruby, and I sat down to a hot, delicious, freshly-made meal and the warmth of family and the heady power of electricity.

Hey, this is like a party," Julianna said with a big smile.  She was having a ball.

That night, Ruby slept on the couch upstairs.  I slept on the couch in the family room downstairs. Warm, with family, having had a good meal and some laughs, I slept like a baby.

The next night  I slept at Ruby's house.  Though she still didn't have electricity, Glen got her pellet stove going and it was enough heat. Ruby adopted me. I began calling her Mummy.

During the day for two straight days I was at home cutting and lugging limbs and branches out into the street. The pile is shown in the photo above.  I didn't mind the work. Actually, as demented as it may sound, I enjoyed it.  Hard physical work and I are made for each other.

Just when I was ready to take on the big limb on the roof and the detached cable, my neighbor across the street, Jeff, came to my rescue. Perfect timing!  I know nothing about electricity and I wasn't about to touch that cable.

"It's dead," Jeff said.  He's a versatile handyman.  And he proceeded to attach the cable.  Then he figured out how to get the limb off the roof without hitting the power lines -- and got up on the ladder and got the job done. I held the ladder.

The big tree limb that we got off the roof was left hanging harmlessly away from the house. We had done enough for one day.  Later I would get up there on a ladder and saw it down.  That was my plan anyway until Tom, a neighbor across the street,  knocked on my door.

"Don't you go up there to try to get that big branch down by by yourself," he said, wagging a forefinger at me. "I'll come over with my ladder and we'll do it.  It's too dangerous by yourself."

"I won't," I said meekly.

Tom, a young strapping fireman, wanted to save an elderly neighbor from hurting himself.  You know, I tend to forget that I am old. Tom was doing me a favor by reminding me.  Tomorrow is Sunday and Tom is home.  I'll go over and ask him to help me. I have no pride.

On the morning of the third day, I arrived home to discover -- drum roll-- electricity! I was no longer homeless!  I could watch the news on TV!  I could read!  I could live!  Well, not quite yet.  It took me two more days to get on the internet and only after repeated calls to Charter Communications and frustrated dealings with recorded voices.

I felt human again.

Now I was worried about my brother Vic, who lives in Sturbridge, which had been hit much harder than Worcester.  I called and left messages and got no reply.  So I drove over to his place. When I pulled into his driveway, there he was, out in the yard cutting fallen limbs with a chainsaw.
 
"You're alive, Vic," I said.

"Yeah, but it's a disaster. Trees and wires are down everywhere and still no electricity."

He said he had been spending his nights with his companion, Marianne, in her home in Northboro.Vic is shown below with a big pile of wood from fallen trees.

He said that the initial outage in Sturbridge was 100 percent. As Vic spoke, out of 4,718 National Grid customers in Sturbridge, 2,902 of them were still without power, according to that morning's Worcester Telegram & Gazette.

And some without family or friends to offer them a place to sleep  were holing up in motels and hotels, when they were lucky enough to find a vacancy. Lots of residents in Sturbridge were running out of both money and patience, as this sign on a neighborhood tree makes clear.

"When do you expect to get it?" I asked Vic.

"They're not saying," he said shaking his head in disgust.

"Is the city going to pick up all these limbs and brush?"

"No. We're talking about notifying the fire department and getting a bunch of us together and having us a big bonfire."

"Good idea.  You could make a party of it."

Vic also said that he didn't mind the work. "Actually, I enjoy it."

Where have you heard that before? Must be in the genes.

Vic said that, all in all, he was lucky; he had no damage to his house.  He led me to where we could see his neighbor's house, pictured above. A huge tree had crashed onto the roof.  "I don't have that."

Nor is that cruel old Mother Nature going to take away one iota of the happiness that Barbara and I feel about grandchild number 10, Talula, out there in Seattle.  She is new living proof that life will and must go on and no freak, pre-Halloween Nor-easter is going to change that.

So let me now put that Nor-easter behind us and celebrate  the birth of Talula, through a few photos.

So long and keep moving.

P.S. Look for my new E-Book, below.

Into the Wild: A Man-Child Takes on a Major Snowstorm.

It would be a one-two punch: two major snowstorms in Massachusetts a couple of days apart. The first one, on a Thursday, caused massive gridlock on highways and city streets. Hoping to beat the storm, waves of people left work early and promptly overwhelmed the highways.

Instead of beating the storm, people endured horrendous 7-hour commutes. Many ran out of gas after idling for hours in standstill traffic. People abandoned their cars. Some slept in them. Thousands had horror stories to tell.

And now another big one was due Sunday morning, a Nor'easter. Central Massachusetts braced for a second "end-of-civilization" snowstorm promising drifts, sleet, power outages, cancelled flights, bone-deep wind chill, and clogged highways turned into stress-ridden parking lots.

We New Englanders like to think that we don't let our sometimes cruel winter storms push us around. Yet as people spoke of the coming Nor'easter, they did so without the usual jauntiness. After two extra-mild winters of teens playing basketball outside without shirts -- that is, half naked -- the fury of the Thursday storm and the havoc it wreaked, had came as a sudden punch in the stomach. Oof!

If the truth be told, people were, if not afraid, certainly nervous. Even some die-hard New England Patriot fans gave away their tickets to Sunday's game against the Jets at Gillette Stadium, rather than risking the icy highways. And around here where during football season family and the job often play second fiddle to the Patriots, that's really saying something.

Then there are people like me, pictured here napping on my 1994 Honda. I'm a polar bear. I could fall asleep on an ice floe. To me, the coming Sunday storm was a great chance to have fun in my own element. My natural habitat was coming to me! How cool is that?

So while many people dreaded the coming big storm, I looked forward to it. Bring it on, baby! While breathless radio and TV reports about the storm's expected power and resulting chaos scared the crap out of many, I was serene. While many wanted to do everything they could to avoid the storm, I wanted to be a part of it. I wanted to bear witness close-up to its power, to take everything it had to throw at me, to learn from it -- and to prevail.

Authorities urged people to stock up on food and stay indoors. That was my cue to bundle up, grab my camera, and go out into the wild to view the latest creation of the grandmaster of all artists. No artist is as brilliant, or works on such an epic scale, or is more deserving of our close attention. No artist can teach us more.

When the elderly are advised not to step foot outside to avoid falling -- perfectly valid and sensible advice -- this old guy (69) runs right out there right in the middle of it. When everybody and everything tells me to take a snowstorm seriously, that it is dangerous, that I could get hurt, I laugh. Ha, ha, ha!

Of course, I'm weird. Or maybe not. I report, you decide.

In the wee hours of Sunday morning, the Nor'easter roared in right on schedule with howling winds, heavy snow, and sinking temperatures. While I slept in my warm house dreaming sweet dreams and looking forward to morning, outside the snow piled up fast.

As usual, I was up early -- by 5:30 -- and when I looked out the window, I smiled. I saw a white wonderland. Contrary to best medical advice, I had a light breakfast of black coffee, half an orange and half a bagel. I prefer a light breakfast and a hearty lunch.

I checked the outside temp. It was 10 degrees with howling winds. The wind-chill factor had to be down to zero. Out there was no place for sissies. To maintain body heat, I bundled up in layers (eg. 3 socks) as if for the Arctic. And by 7:00 am, I stepped out of my warm house into a much anticipated and feared storm.

My little Honda in the driveway was covered in a thick white blanket. The snow in the driveway was so deep, I couldn't walk through it. I had to push through it, using my legs as little plows. I pushed out into the middle of the street and stood there taking in the lastest work of the grandmaster. No question about it, I was in the presence of genius. I felt privileged -- and awestruck.

There was not a sound, except for a whipping wind and rustling trees. Not a car. No sign of a plow. Not a human being. Not an imperfection. While I slept, the world just outside my door had been transformed into something magical, breathtaking in its natural beauty, all without benefit -- or burden -- of a human hand.

I looked. Looking is not the same as seeing. It is possible to look and not to see a thing. All of us do that every day. In the course of a day, we look at many people and things but do not see them. Out of self-absorbtion, out of habit, out of laziness, I know that I am one of the worst offenders.

But now, I want to see.

For long moments, I just stood there in the middle of the road taking it all in: the snow, the wind, the trees, the white rooftops, the quiet, the emptiness, the purity, the absense of all humans, the extravagant beauty. I stood in a place where on an ordinary day I would be asking to be run over by a driver going too fast. Not now. Now the vehicles, useless, were gone. Now, powered by nothing but my own two feet, I owned the street.

How empowering!

How wonderful to be able to walk out your door and see a work of art that no human being could possibly contemplate much less create! This photo is of a little work of art I found in my backyard. It was by the same artist that created the storm.

I started walking, or rather pushing through the snow. I would head down my hill and make my way to the White Hen convenience store to pick up my beloved New York Times. The store was less than a mile away, but the snow was deep and taking a lot of energy slogging through it.

Suddenly, a flicker of fear. What if I was the only human being out here? What if everything was shut down? What if today was worse than Thursday? What if I got tired from pushing through the deep snow? Would I have trouble getting back up the hill?

I had my cell phone. Would I have to call 911 or the police department or the fire department? I wondered which would be the best one to call to rescue a delusionary senior citizen who stupidly strolled out into a massive Nor'easter, ran out of puff, and got stranded?

Should I just go back in the house? No one would have to know. If I said nothing, my little aborted attempt at bravado would never have happened. I was trying to decide, when I noticed something that squelched that flicker of fear: my fresh footprints in the virgin snow.

There was something elemental about them. They had intruded upon and altered a masterpiece of nature and yet they were now an integral part of the work and could not be taken back. In a flash, I realized that once you step upon virgin snow, you are a part of it and there can be no turning back.

I pushed on. Making my way down my long steep hill, I saw no person or vehicle, no sign of life in fact. Not until I reached the White Hen convenience store, did I see a human being. It was a solitary figure trudging on snowy

Chandler Street toward White Hen.

As she got closer, I recognized her as an employee of White Hen. Her name is Enkelejda and she is from Albania. She has been in this country for three years. She said the storm didn't bother her. "In Albania, we are used to lots of snow," she said.

The store must be open! Human life and civilization! Maybe even The New York Times! Then I noticed that The Donut Shop across the street was open and I could make out human forms inside. I was going to survive the Nor'easter!

Sure enough, The White Hen was open. The two clerks that had opened up had both walked to work. Not only that, The New York Times was there. I went in and bought the old grey lady, a newspaper I have been reading every day for 50 years. It's called addiction, folks, though (I maintain) a positive one.

I went over to The Donut Shop for a steaming cup of java, along with a couple of other hardy souls. Like me, they are not cowed by a Nor'easter, even one as big as this one. (For the record, that little panic attack described above never happened and anyone who says it did is full of it.)

While I read the Times and sipped coffee and reveled in having linked up with civilization, a driver got stuck outside. Customers rushed out to help. I rushed out with my camera to get the picture. If you get stuck in a big snowstorm, you better hope that I'm not the one there in your hour of need -- unless you desperately want your picture taken.

The trip back was good exercise, my hill being a steep one. By now, the plows had cleared the hill. This being Sunday, the whole neighborhood was out clearing snow and there was much friendly chatter about the storm. Nothing like a snowstorm to get neighbors talking to each other.

Against the best advice of medical experts, my wife Barbara and I shoveled snow for nearly two hours. It was exhilerating. I went back into the house sweating and happy.

In my neighborhood, the first brave footsteps in the virgin snow had been mine. I went into the wild alone, became one with it, and emerged from it alive and inspired while the once mighty and feared Nor'easter would die a quick death.

By afternoon, after concerted assaults by plows and snowblowers and countless shovel attacks by homeowners, the storm was a shadow of itself. Cleared driveways and walks and drivable streets said that humankind had reclaimed the turf.

As it turned out, the second storm was not nearly as bad as the first. But of course as one of the few fearless people to be out in the storm at the height of its power, I tell a very different story. It is of a heroic figure (remember, those panicky moments never happened) who dared to go out first, giving others the courage to follow.

So long and keep moving.