Tuesday Haiku
A storm is coming
Thanksgiving is coming too
French toast or stuffing?
Thanksgiving is coming too
French toast or stuffing?
Think about it.
--from 11/25/14
Two days before
Thanksgiving the weather forecasters predicted a storm to hit our area the
morning of the day before Thanksgiving.
Of course, since they are based in New York City, at first they said
rain, possibly mixing with some wet snow with no major accumulation on the
roads, some accumulation in the higher elevations well north and west of the
city (us!). I don’t know what happens
where you live when a winter storm is on the way, but around here most of the
population panics and runs to the supermarket to stock up on bread, milk and
eggs. I used to work at one of our local
supermarkets and so I can attest to this first hand. I do not understand this phenomenon as unless
a major blizzard is expected we are really only inconvenienced for a few hours
by unplowed roads, generally 18 hours at most. People stock up like they’ll be
snowed in for a week at least. So it was
that I got to wondering if the stores would have enough bread to supply
everyone because turkey stuffing is made with bread, a snowstorm staple it
seems, and with one on the way perhaps there would be reports of a bread
shortage and then people would have to choose which to have—French toast during
the storm or stuffing on the big day? I watched the news anxiously the next
day, and kept an eye on social media but there were no reports of a bread
shortage. Two of my relatives reported, however,
that Tuesday evening there were only a couple quarts of milk left (skim, to
boot!) by 7:00 and a few loaves of bread.
No report on the eggs but I’m sure there were enough to go around. Of course if the holiday had been Easter the
eggs might have been in short supply and folks would have needed to decide
between coloring hard cooked eggs to color for Easter baskets and egg hunts or
their snow French toast. One of the
aforementioned relatives also reported that another supermarket’s parking lot
was full with cars waiting for spots to empty out. That much business usually happens the day
before a holiday as well as before a storm so I can only imagine how busy they
had been all day. I also heard
anecdotally that the day before Thanksgiving, in the height of the 8” or so of
heavy wet snow we received, the local supermarket was not busy at all. See, we (around here for the most part) are
wimpy in comparison with places such as Buffalo, NY where our 8” probably made
them laugh because they had about 7 feet last week. Around here, it’s a big
deal and I watched a town pickup with snowplow attached get stuck in the snow
on my street the other day. He finally
backed down the hill to the highway and went up a street he’d already
successfully cleared before making a pass down our road. Last year two plows got stuck at the top of
my street on the corner; a big snowplow was the first to get stuck and then the
pickup tried to help and they were stuck facing each other a few feet
apart. That was something to see at 5:00
a.m. They were stuck at the top of my
street and I was on my phone with my husband who was stuck in his car at the
other end trying to get out onto the highway to attempt his 40 plus mile
commute to work. A man who lives in the
house at that end came out with a shovel and made a path for him to drive his
car through the snowbank to get onto the highway. There really was quite a lot of snow last
year. I’m hoping this year will not be
quite as snowy. Although I’m sure the
grocers and suppliers of bread, milk and eggs wouldn’t mind!
