You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy!™
A little snow in the South equates to big problems in the South.
For days the weather casters have been on the roof tops of every TV station howling that the sky is going to fall.
Words like accumulation and blizzard and weather event are sputtered endlessly like so much confetti raining down after the Superbowl.
After watching it for days and days and days, after letting the possibility of foul weather beat you in the skull like a cave man bashes a wildebeest with a club, you finally say to yourself; “OK how bad is it gonna be?”
Wednesday February 9th 2011, we were about to find out.
Because of the chronic and consistent warnings, school systems were on a higher alert than the Baghdad International Airport.
At 12:30 pm, schools were let out early. There was paranoia in the air. After a week long onslaught of meteorological meltdowns and pessimistic prognostications, School Officials threw up the white towel and surrendered on the battle field of educational enhancement.
The prediction for “snow-meggedon” was Wednesday afternoon, just around 1pm, maybe 2. So it is with this knowledge that I am in the elementary school parking lot talking to soccer moms who looked at the sun in the sky and laughed their little soccer mom laughs.
“This is stupid. The school system should be ashamed of themselves,” a soccer mom sneers.
The mothers tell me that picking up the kids 3 hours early is an inconvenience and a break in the learning process. I think it’s cutting into their tennis lesson with “Kyle the Stud”.
The prediction is 2-4 inches of snow. Right now it’s pleasant and friendly skies.
“The South should be ashamed of itself,” one mother says with a touch of glass in her voice. She will later admit she is a Jersey native and she has only experienced one snow day in her whole life.
I think the woman who reminds me of Snooky on the Jersey Shore, perhaps a little less orange, seems angry, that she has missed out.
12:30 comes and goes. The buses leave and the soccer moms in their soccer vans and their soccer SUV’s with the soccer ball decals in the rear windows leave.
Soon the school is quiet. It is me and my camera man and a live truck in the parking lot.
We too giggle that maybe the weather guys blew this one big time.
We wouldn’t think that again for 2 days.
Around 3:30pm, the first flake, then the second and then a million billion flakes.
The sun was gone and the ground was white. It looked like a nuclear winter with the sky falling in on itself. The parking lot turned from black to white in 15 minutes.
Traction gave way to slippery pavement. It was slick like butter greasing a cookie sheet.
The wind kicked up and the snow got sideways and Mother Nature’s bitch slap was on.
Like a wrestling match with a frozen tsunami, the waves of permafrost rained down on Middle Tennessee.
I am not sure why the snow dump was so furious, but I decided that Mother Nature was pissed at the soccer moms for talking crap and she was blowing a furious volley of flakes and frost and trouble.
We do a couple of live shots about school let out early, but within an hour that story sucks.
Suddenly the live shot in the school parking lot is old news. What soccer moms think about early dismissal is a big “WHO CARES.’
Beyond the school driveway, motorists are snarling badly, like a block of cheese in the digestive track of a snow snake.
“Move the live truck,” comes the demand from the Executive Producer. “Get to the interstate, there are wrecks everywhere.”
“We gotta move,” I say to the live truck guy who gives me a look of indignation.
This ain’t no 9-5 job, homey! “Break it down!”
Wooosh….
The air is coming out of the live truck mast and we start wrapping up frozen audio cables.
It’s 18 degrees and we are frozen, but we are going to make this happen.
It’s why we got into this business. The adrenaline is pumping like oil in a racing engine.
I can’t wait to get to the next location wherever the hell that is.
We pack up the trucks and begin rolling on streets better suited for dog sleds. We decide going far is stupid. Staying close is smart. We drive a quarter mile from the school to a nearby highway on ramp and park on the side of an angled curve.
Is it the best choice? Hardly. Is it where I decide to plant my damned News flag. Hell Yeah.
“You cool with this?” my photog asks the live truck guy.
“I wouldn’t park here,” he says, still upset that he had to move.
“We cutting into your nap time,” I feel like shouting, but I don’t have time.
The interstate is a stew pot of confusion.
We start dragging cables and cameras and lights and within 15 minutes we’re hot.
I get in front of the camera as a strong wind of wet and snow and pellets beats my eye balls.
My eye balls hate snow pellets. Always have. Always will.
Behind me the highway is one big four lane, indiscernible white out. Cars are driving 15 miles an hour and that looks too fast for conditions.
Amazingly, people are hanging out windows, I hear them singing and whistling and yelling my name.
It’s crazy how crazy people get when the world gets crazy.
I’m listening to the newscast in my ear, chomping at the bit to tell the world what kind of chaos is raining down upon me.
I’ve got a car in the ditch there. I’ve got an ambulance siren blaring up the ramp there. Blue lights are swirling in the vortex of evil around us.
I am waiting and waiting and waiting for my cue, but it’s not coming.
The weather lady is living the dream. This is what weather people live for. This is the “I told you this was going to happen and it is happening” kind of moment.
She is talking way longer than the producer says the weather lady should talk. She is over her wrap cue by about 90 seconds. Not much in your job, but in TV, time is all you get. Her time = my time.
Finally she wraps and tosses it to the anchor. As soon as the anchor begins to toss to me on the side of the interstate, the producer is in my ear telling me to wrap.
WRAP!
I just started. I have barely acknowledged our existence here on the interstate. I haven’t told you about the slide off there and the icy road there. I certainly haven’t told you how hard it was to drive a quarter mile and set this whole mess up for a 9 second live shot!!!
“Back to you,” I say.
My photographer is pissed, but his hands are so cold, so numb, all he wants to do is warm his digits on the heater like frozen sausage over a flame.
“don’t worry about it,” I say climbing into the car for some heat. We’re ready when they want us.”
We regroup and get ready for the next live hit.
In the meantime I dig up some facts. I call the police chief in town and he tells me that 30 minute drives are taking two hours. He says the police are working three wrecks and there is one right where I am standing. I see the blue lights and hear a siren from an ambulance. The chief says secondary roads are even worse. He paints a bleak picture.
Coming to you in 30 seconds, the producer shouts in my ear.
I get a text from an old buddy. “What does your hat say?”
I laugh out loud realizing i am wearing a USC hat.
“Ratings are going to suffer,” he continues.
You’re hot the producer says.
I start talking and now I have 2 minutes to play.
No weather lady losing her damn mine. This live shot is all mine.
I paint a picture of slow moving southbound traffic and barely moving north bound traffic. I point out the car that couldn’t negotiate the off ramp and slid, slowly, into the median, like an ice cube slowly sinking in a glass of cold syrup.
People are screaming out windows and trucks are honking horns.
While talking, I swear a van cruises by and at least 4 college guys are hanging out windows, singing some kind of crazy frat house drinking song. I want to turn around and ask for a cold one, but I hang in and pretend like nobody is singing at the top of their lungs on the interstate.
It is surreal.
I do my final live shot and the producer girl says in my ear, “That’s it, all clear.”
And so it ends.
I say thanks to the live truck guy and my trusty photog and climb into my own car and join the masses going nowhere fast in the weather lady’s white dream.
And that is crazy.