Armageddon…..

There aren’t many things in life that are funnier than a novice on a boat ramp, an inexperienced man and wife backing a RV into a parking space, or the insanity of folks facing a snow storm. The weather prognosticators promised us an end of world snow storm. It ain’t happened yet and we have more frost in our frost free frig than on our sidewalk. That’s okay, but here in Springfield folks have more bread, eggs and toilet paper on hand than ever before. We know as we ventured out to have Sharon’s glasses adjusted and mingled with the hoards.

Our venture to Costco was entertaining. We arrived a few minutes early, and were forced to wait with the other common people in freezing temperatures while folks with the high dollar cards breezed in smirking at us poor folks. A gentleman and his wife were shivering in line ahead of us when his wife complained about how long the 3 minute wait was. Her husband answered by saying he has always told her that 3 minutes was a long time. We all had a laugh. Costco has lots of short aisles with merch piled high, thus creating blind corners. Death traps as folks were whizzing around at subsonic speeds with carts piled high with toilet paper. Courtesy does not exist in such dire circumstances and folks lucky enough to avoid a collision glared at each other with deadly menace.

The herd mentality sets in under such dire circumstances. We watched as folks shopped the bakery displays and noted that if someone grabbed a package of double chocolate cookies, the stack would be depleted in minutes by desperate folks who surmised these cookies were necessary when the end is near. The poor guy at the exit had his hands full looking for an unchecked carton of eggs. You could not sneak anything out of a Costco if you tried as everything is packaged in quantities that defy reason. Need a little Benadryl, you have to buy a 10 year supply to get a single pill. Folks eschewed the produce aisles, instead loading up on enough “comfort” food to cause Dr. Oz and his buddy Mr. Kennedy to faint in disbelief. In a final assault on humanity, death lurked in the parking lots where folks who weighed the most drove like maniacs to get a space a few feet closer to the building. These same folks, who should not venture out without supervision, left their carts everywhere but the cart corrals. We always park out in the north forty, as I abhor door knockers, and had to walk by the hurrying hoards. Our tears of laughter nearly froze on our cheeks as we mingled with these folks who have not had this much intensity since negotiating a prom date in high school.

What did our forefathers do when weather threatened. Not much because they had the presence of mind to always be prepared. Their larders were stocked with flour, cornmeal and sugar. Eggs were always available in the hen house and our grandmothers could put on a nutritious and delicious meal without measuring anything, from deserts to main courses of ball jars of green beans and a slab of salt pork. The milk plant was up and running, 24/7 and needed to be fed and milked daily. They went to the feed store in town on Saturdays to stock feed for the chickens, maybe buy a bag of hard candy and fuel the pickup. They took weather as it came, no panic, no mad dashes to stock up. They were America’s first “preppers”, and didn’t know it. What would they say about today’s mass rushes to buy groceries on the advice of our weather folks?

Is it any wonder that folks in third world countries hate us. A land of excesses, never more evident than when snow panic sets in.

SR