.:how to get free in a blizzard when your street still hasn't been plowed and you don't have a 4-wheel drive vehicle:.

As you may know from the previous post, we are in the middle of a blizzard. Yes. Missouri's version of a blizzard. Yes, our doors still opened. Yes, the main roads were snowless and operational within 24 hours. Yes, Wal-Mart never closed and Formosa's neon light stayed lit "OPEN" through all of the crazy days, but still, some of us still have yet to see the city snow plows.

Those of you who are our friends on facebook know that we finally caught a glimpse of the snow angel that has been plowing our driveway these last few snows. He has a beard and drives a mini John Deere snowplow. Needless to say, we were rather disappointed when we hadn't seen him these past few days. We have a wedding to shoot on Saturday in St. Louis (woot woot, Katy & Ryan!!!) and, well, not getting out was not an option. So Brian mustered up his gumption, bundled up, and was on his way out the door when, lo and behold, the mystery bearded John Deere angel showed up! He made a little path all the way down the street to our driveway. On his way back, he shoveled some other home's driveway and they talked him into shoveling them a wide enough path on the street to get out onto freedom. Guess what? That left only 3 house lengths left until we could connect with the clearing. Brian bounded outside with shovel in hand to begin doing what no Columbia plow had done yet: clear a path!

I finished my lunch in time to get out while Brian was clearing those last few feet of snow to widen the path. Thankfully, right before he started the first vehicle (a Tahoe) braved its way down our street and left us some tire tracks to do perfect measuring of how wide we needed to shovel.

Well, we were finally free with those last few shovel fulls. We could leave. But then, sad day, we turned around. And guess what? There were not one, not two, but SIX more houses past us that were still locked in with the snow. It appeared that unless they had a 4-wheel drive vehicle (and we were guessing they didn't seeing that no one had tracks out of their cleared driveway) there was no way any of those folks were getting out. That Tahoe did it only a few minutes before, but there's no way that little cars like ours that are without 4-wheel drive would have even a chance of getting down the street.

See?

So, I put away the camera, grabbed a shovel, and started hollowing out the road between the tire tracks. Brian soon joined me after he finished packing down the snow with our car on the newly cleared portion of the street. The next thing we knew, four more neighbors had joined in the effort (and another lightheartedly peaked out her door to laugh at us "city folk" getting antsy to get back to the real world by clearing out the street when the plows hadn't yet come). The neighbors helped us clear all the way down the street to all of the driveways and a few even helped connect some of the other driveways to the cleared path!

I felt like we were part of a movie where all of the neighbors on a street feel like strangers and wish that they could be more of a community. Then, one day, a blizzard comes which traps everyone in their homes for several days and the city never comes to clear the street. After a few days of stir craziness, one neighbor picks up a shovel and takes it to the street to help others out, then another, then another, and then before you know it everyone is friends and talking and the street is clear. The moral of the story? It only takes a blizzard to create spontaneous goodwill and selflessness as everyone (well, not everyone, but more than just us!) joins hands and works together to get the job done. We even got a few new facebook friends out of the deal! Who knew? = )

See what we all did? Now every driveway on our little road can connect to our little one car width wide pathway to Garth. Columbia citizens unite!

Oddly, it only took us about an hour and a half. That's teamwork, eh?

After it was all done, I told Brian to give me a corny thumbs up.


"Hey, SMILE, silly!"



How funny is it that only a few feet away, the world had already gone back to normal days ago. The library is in full operation and Broadway is completely clear and has been for some time. Next time, we'll be parking our car in the library parking lot, thankyouverymuch, so that we can actually use it the next time the blizzard hits! Much better to just hop a snow pile than to spend hours shoveling.

All in a day's work. = ) Sorry, ladies, this fine man is taken.

Peace out, ya'll!

-Mallory (& Brian) (courtesy of Brian's iPhone)



P.S. I noticed the loveliest ice crystals forming on our window this morning so I decided that they needed to be documented. If only my camera could even begin to capture their beauty.

However, I must say after I stared at the empty photo, full of only ice crystals, it occured to me that the photo was asking to be written on. So, the only thing I could think to write on the photo in post production was perhaps a little juvenile but when Brian comes home from running his "Thank the Lord we can finally get out of the house!" errands, he's going to smile and giggle when he sees the writing.


Happy blizzard of 2011, my friends!