Claims Adjuster On the Roof Again

cnn photo

...in a week or so, if the local weather guys are right. After last year's ice glazed end to January, hundreds of local houses were damaged or crushed, roads blocked by hundred year old downed trees and the stores -if you could get there -were filled with empty shelves. I don't think there was a D battery or a generator to be had in three counties. Lowes ordered more chainsaws and often the truck would be met by customers, lined up out in the cold. Some had gotten a ride into town by hiking across a pasture to the neighbor's house, who was lucky enough to have a vehicle without a tree sprawled on top of it.

Here in town, those of us with any kind of fireplace fared a little better.
Kind of.
It's 18 degrees and snowing again. We are hunched around our dining room table in heavy parkas, faces in the flickering light. Here on our street it's 1880 again, and one walking into the room would have the impression of shaggy, unwashed creatures sitting in the dark, maybe nawing on bones or a small rodent who strayed in out of the cold. No street lights anywhere; awesome in it's way , because if you were driving by on the interstate, you'd not guess there was a city of 60,000 just a block or two off the ramp - the place completely swallowed up in darkness, save the red glow of a fireplace here and there, or the occasional feeble beam of flashlight. Patrol cars slowly cruising the neighborhoods, using search lights.

By the first of the week, though, the sun was out and the ice was melting -but the town had been hit by an atom bomb. our yard sustained alot of damage, and we lost some much loved trees, some older than the house, which was built in ice wagon days. Parts of the 8 foot privacy fence gone, the storage building caved in and by looking at it sideways for a minute, like a dog - suddenly it would dawn on the viewer that there was a riding lawn- mower shaped mound underneath. So many huge branches in the yard it took six guys with chain saws four days to clear the bulk of it away. But the insurance guy came out, walked the property, made a bunch of notes and the next week we had a sizable check in the mail.
It all turned out alright, and nobody was hurt- even when the side of the house caught fire and we had to evacuate. No power for days and days -weeks for some folks.

And now they say it will be here again tomorrow.
Please be wrong, local weather personalities with blinding-white teeth.
Please.