Crazy Stable

This is the Delta of Doom, Caton Avenue and St. Paul's Place. Here, commuters plunge into fathomless black water as they exit the northern end of the Church Avenue B and Q station. After a day of sleet, there was no avoiding it, not even by clambering over the treacherous remains of three (four?) snowstorms. As I slogged through in my "waterproof" boots, an icy trickle invaded my sock as the frigid lake breached a zipper three inches up the ankle.

The pitiful flags wave in celebration of a new newstand/deli on this desolate plaza, replacing the old newstand/deli. That one closed around the time they tore out the token booth on this end of the station, leaving the Metrocard machines in a menacing, filthy void. I wish the deli guys luck in their lonely outpost; the MTA has told us, in a meeting with a local legislator about the station's decrepitude, that, basically, "today is not your day, and tomorrow isn't looking too good, either."

I am about to conclude a fortnight of crossing this River Styx en route to a purgatorial stint on a grand jury. I am sworn to secrecy as to our proceedings, but they present a dispiriting view of human nature (and that's just my fellow jurors, never mind the defendants). I've gotten to court through two snowstorms, an arctic cold snap, and a sleet storm; the first week, I served with a violently wet and debilitating cold, and the second, I have spent recovering from the absurd and repulsive ordeal of a failed (yes, failed) colonoscopy. (Do not be deterred from having this important and life-saving test based on my horrible and futile experience. I am told that only 4% of people manage to drink a gallon of antifreeze and still not be "ready" for the scope.)

And all of this has been nothing compared to the fact that we are, incredibly, losing Beloved Cousin, to the same malignant enemy that the scope seeks to thwart. A vibrant, radiant, and generous lady dwells now in the shadowlands; most of a continent, locked in snow, stands between us, although I am comforted knowing her children and grandchildren are around her. In her honor, I will go back to the friendly endoscopy suite before a year is out and try again.

But before then, this spring, I will plant my new raised bed in Beloved Cousin's honor. She grew a ridiculous bounty of vegetables in the mountain sunshine. In one of her last missives, she urged us to "seize the day," as she did last year--not just gardening, but traveling to see loved ones and enjoying all she could of life's beauty even through multiple rounds of chemo. If faith is "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen," then I will pick up my garden catalogs and order seeds.

Today was Candlemas, a now-obscure feast 40 days after Christmas, celebrating light and hope. It co-opted a Celtic pagan feast called Imbolc, a halfway point in the long journey from the winter solstice to the spring equinox. Halfway home.

Now dismiss Thy servant, O Lord,
In peace, according to Thy word:
For mine own eyes hath seen Thy salvation,
Which Thou hast prepared in the sight of all the peoples,
A light to reveal Thee to the nations
And the glory of Thy people Israel.

--Candlemas liturgy (Luke 2:29-32)

Well, we ain't going nowhere for awhile, I guess...because this is our street, Marlborough Road in "Victorian Flatbush," the heart of Brooklyn...48 hours after the snow began in the Great Post-Christmas Blizzard of 2010. Virgin drifts not only clogged our sidestreet (presumably one of the "secondary" or even "tertiary" ones that Mr. Bloomberg has advised to wait patiently for the plows)...they clogged the major cross-street. But more on that in a minute.

Here's another shot looking down to Church Avenue. A plow came by as the first flakes fell on Sunday, but since then...nothing. No ambulance or fire truck could reach us if needed.

Church Avenue itself was a slushy mess barely passable by a conga line of idling trucks. Pedestrians, even ones with canes, gamely clambered over the unplowed mountains to cross the street.

The faux coconuts adorning our local Cambodian temple were a poignant nod to distant tropics.

At the other end of our block, incredibly, we found more unplowed misery. Our stretch of Caton Avenue is definitely "primary"--a heavily trafficked truck corridor between Fort Hamilton Parkway to the west and Linden Boulevard to the east. But today it lay untouched under four-foot drifts. Here, at least, Bloomberg's excuse--abandoned cars blocking the plows--was in evidence, and then some: On our very corner, we found a mini-disaster area!

Yes, that's an incinerated taxicab. We smelled something burning last night, and figured (naturally, this being the Crazy Stable) that our basement was on fire. We never thought "outside" because we never heard sirens--the car must have burned up unimpeded by any emergency personnel. Thank God no one seemed to have been inside. As we looked on, the owner of the white car stood nearby in horror at the collateral damage to her Nissan.

Behind it, a semi, a van and an Access-a-Ride bus were all mired. Both the truck driver and bus driver had been sitting in their vehicles for more than 24 hours, and they were still there at 3 p.m. today. Tuesday. In the middle of Brooklyn...at the end of the world. Here's the video.

You know, I was a kid during the "Lindsay blizzard" in the 60's; we lived up in the hills of Little Neck, where the snowbound thing went on for days. It seemed magical to me as a kid. Now I understand why my parents couldn't get in on the fun. As for Bloomberg, he's right that a lot of numbskulls have ditched their cars in the streets; but it's a Catch-22, since the tow trucks can't reach these guys unless the streets are plowed. Somebody's screwing up big-time, because in almost 25 years here (including 2 snowstorms rated worse than this one), we've never been this abandoned.

UPDATE: The plow came through at 3 a.m. Wednesday, and I think we heard tow trucks hauling off the casualties; now suiting up to face digging out the driveway. Oh, and--as of 1 p.m., the abandoned semi was STILL THERE, blocking all traffic on Caton Avenue without a cop or detour sign in sight; plows came near it under the eye of a Dept. of Sanitation superviser-type fellow in a DOS sedan, then backed away.