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Show me that 'Winter Wonderland'
By Judy Million Pirrie '60
Feb 27, 2002 -- All is fine here. I am in my own little perfect world being Grandma to our little 16 month old. He is the cutest, smartest and I get him at least every Tuesday and Thursday to myself all day. Mom went back to work those two days to help pay dad's graduate school $$$. Our home is full of toys and cribs and high chairs again.I am corresponding with Carol Poole again. She is finally home from Saudi Arabia. I always worried about her there. She worked as a nurse for Aramco over there for many years. She lives down at the beach now and says its cold. :) She and I lived on the same street in TC and were good friends in High School and kept in touch after until she moved to Saudi.
We survived the big ice storm here. We were frozen in for two days until we got out and scraped the driveway. The street salters never do our street. It is only a block long. (5 houses) but runs between two main streets (school routes) We just have to slide down to one of the other streets and slide down our driveway. The day of the storm Tim was at work and when he got home his lightweight Ford Ranger Truck with no sand bags in the back took us 1 hour to get up our drive and into the garage.
I inched it in while he chipped ice and put de-icer down. We had no electricity for 5 days.
We could use the top of the gas stove to cook and had oil lamps and camp lanterns but out heat is forced air so we kept the fireplace going. Our neighbor across the street who we watch out for told us to take her generator and use it. She had heat in the basement and just moved down there. Tim rewired the furnace, and hooked it to the generator and the two fridg/freezers. We turned it off at midnight and back on in the morn. House only got down to 55 at night. Our down comforter took care of that. The days we had no electricity, we put our food in the garage. It was in the 20's in there so cold enough to keep the food. (It has a heater if we need it.)
Almost like camping in the Sierras like we did for 19 years with the kids in tent and trailer. That was by choice tho.
UPDATE: Fallen tree limbs and wires of all kinds. People have 6 ft high piles of limbs at the curbs for the city to pick up. It will still be another month or more until all are picked up.
You couldn't go outside without looking up for falling limbs, wires or ice. All night long and for days later you would hear sounds like explosions that were tree limbs breaking off. Big sheets of ice would fall off them and the power lines. The irony is the bright sun the next day made the "ice" tree's beautiful. Most of our trees are young trees so they didn't break. We lost only one little limb. Even the two giant trees in the front yard didn't break. The neighbor across the street has soft maple trees, old and Big. They lost almost all their branches. Just the trunks standing.
("Tim" is Judy's husband Tim Pirrie, class of 1961. An explanation of "street salters" is available to Southern Californians from this publication for five dollars plus postage and handling. Ed.)
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| Judy Moon Polick | Apr 19, 2002 | Blue Jay, CA | retired |
| I was so thrilled to see the name Judy Million Pirrie - would like to re-connect but my e-mail would not go through. Help? | |||
