Author
So Much For Global Warming! – A Vignette
Meredith Wilson stood in the front door of her apartment building, the door open slightly, evaluating the weather. “So much for global warming!” she said, annoyed. She loved warm weather and hated cold.
It was April 10 and there was snow coming down, hard, with the temperature only 30°F. Letting the door close, Meredith went back up to her third floor apartment to add a couple layers of clothing. It would probably be a long wait at the bus stop and she didn’t intend to suffer through it the way she had the day before.
Clad now in insulated underwear, slacks, blouse, jacket, calf high boots, ski pants and parka, NEOS insulated over-boots, glove liners, insulated gloves, and warm hat, Meredith resolutely left the warm confines of the apartment building and trudged the block and a half needed to reach the bus stop nearest the apartment building.
Deciding that falling only twice on the way and not breaking anything was a major accomplishment, Meredith stood silent, her back against the wind. There was a bench, but it was piled high with snow. Better to stand than get wet brushing the snow off.
She heard the bus coming, the sound of the brakes squalling slightly as the driver came to a stop very slowly to avoid skidding on the sheet of ice under the new snow. Scrabbling to get the thick glove off her right hand so she could pull the bus pass from the pocket of the parka, Meredith slipped and landed on the steps of the bus, causing a loud grunt to escape her lips.
Half a dozen passengers laughed, but the bus driver hurriedly left her seat and helped a red faced Meredith up. “You okay, lady?” the driver asked.
“Yeah, Yeah, I’m fine.” She showed her pass and managed to wallow her way onto the bus, to a seat in the very back, ignoring the continued laughs at her fall and appearance.
“How do these people expect to survive if the bus breaks down?” Meredith thought to herself. Most of the people wore only a jacket over their street clothes. She had to admit, she was getting too warm in the bus and unzipped the parka and threw the hood back. Wasn’t much else she could do, besides take off her hat and gloves.
She rode silently as the bus made its slow rounds, only a few people getting on and off. It was apparent that many people had heeded the warnings to stay at home unless it was an emergency. Meredith frowned. Her boss considered missing work an emergency, so here she was.
Meredith zipped up the parka, and put on the hat and gloves as they approached her stop near the office building where she worked as an executive assistant to a stock broker. If the pay wasn’t so good, she’d tell Helen Meyers where to put her stock portfolio. Meredith shook her head. Better to leave those thoughts buried deep. Helen was loyal only to herself and profits, but demanded loyalty and respect from those that worked for her.
Gripping the handrails, Meredith made it off the bus without falling and began the one block trudge to the office building. Unfortunately, she had to face into the wind and her cheeks and nose were verging on frostbite by the time she made it.
The winds were up and the temperatures were down in the time she’d been on the bus. “Should have added the scarf,” Meredith muttered. She made it to the main doors of the building without falling. She felt for the two guys trying to keep the sidewalks cleared as the snow continued to come down hard.
Pushing through the air-lock entry doorway, Meredith pulled her gloves off, pushed the hood of the parka back, and headed for the elevators. She dreaded the ride up and down the elevators. Helen had the entire top floor of the building. That was the fifteenth. Meredith always expected the elevator to stall with her in it, if there was a power outage or earthquake or any of a dozen other reasons to cause the elevator to not work properly.
Again, she made the journey without a problem and began to peel layers as she headed for the small employee lounge that Helen grudgingly allowed. She hung up the parka and other outer clothes. In the slacks, blouse, and pumps that she kept at the office, and still wearing the insulated underwear, Meredith went to her small office next to Helen’s palatial one.
Helen’s secretary, Glenda, wasn’t at her desk. Knocking on the connecting door first, Meredith opened it and looked inside. Helen wasn’t there. The phone on Meredith’s desk rang and she closed the door and went to the desk.
It was Helen. “Won’t be in today, Dearie. I doubt anything will come up, but hold down the fort and send the peons home. That would be without pay. I’m not responsible for the weather, after all.” Helen hung up before Meredith could respond.
“Well, if that doesn’t take the cake!” Meredith said, rather loudly for her. She went out into the cubical area of the large office and called for attention. Only seven heads rose above the cubical walls. At least she was only sending the seven home, and not all seventeen.
“Miss Meyers has instructed me to have everyone go home.”
Before she could tell them that it would be an un-paid day, someone asked about it.
“I’m sorry. Miss Meyers said it would not be a paid day, due to the extreme weather. I’m… well… I’m sorry.”
“I don’t see how you work with her! She’s a witch!” blurted Raymond.
“That’s enough, Raymond,” Meredith replied, despite agreeing with him silently. “Just go home, stay warm, and call before you come back in. No telling how long this storm will last.”
A grim, silent group traipsed past Meredith to get their things from the employee lounge. Meredith sighed and went back to her office. She’d played the bad guy for Helen more times than she cared to remember.
Waiting a few minutes at her desk, getting the computer up, Meredith then went to check the rest of the office. All the computers were off, and everyone was gone, except her. She hoped that everyone would make it home all right.
Meredith went back to her office and began to work on the computer, keeping an eye on the various ticker screens her computer system boasted. There wasn’t much going on at any of the stock exchanges with which Helen dealt.
After making sure everything was going all right, Meredith turned on the TV on a credenza a few feet from her desk, and tuned it to the Weather Channel. Her heart sank as she watched an on-scene meteorologist give a live report from just a few blocks from the office building.
The city was shutting down for the duration. That included bus service. Some were stuck on snow filled streets. Others had made it to the bus terminal and parked. The current report was that everyone stranded on the stopped busses had been taken to their home or other destination by snowmobile club members that had volunteered for the task.
“Great! Just great!” Meredith muttered. She was stuck at the office for the duration, apparently. But a wan smile curled her lips slightly. It wouldn’t be so bad. She had her secret stash emergency preparations in her office. But her plan of action if stranded in the building included getting a few things done as soon as the situation became evident.
First was water. She had drinking water for several days, but if power went down the booster pumps in the building would shut down and she couldn’t get water to flush the toilet. She had a bucket toilet as part of the supplies, but using the flush toilet as long as possible would be much better.
Fearful that the power would go out before she could draw water, Meredith hurried to the nearest utilities closet and retrieved a duffle bag from its hiding place. She took out a small box of untreated heavy duty construction trash bags and removed two of them from the box. A hose with a rubber faucet connection on one end was also in the duffle. She took it, and a three gallon bucket, too.
Hurrying, Meredith went to the ladies room and pulled the trash liner from the large trashcan near the door. Placing one of her heavy duty bags in the trashcan, she moved it over by the row of sinks.
With the rubber connector pushed up onto the faucet, she put the other end of the hose into the trashcan and turned on the cold water. Tapping her foot impatiently, Meredith waited until the can was nearly full and then turned off the water.
She did the same thing in the men’s room. She had water for several flushes of a toilet if the water went off, but the sewer still worked. The lights in the bathroom went out just as she opened the door of the bathroom. The emergency lights came on, creating bright spots here and there in the office.
Next Meredith retrieved a crank up flashlight from the stash in her office credenza, wound it up, and turned it on to check it. It was fine. She would have light when the emergency lights went out after twenty minutes or so.
With the heavy clouds and snow, the office wouldn’t be very bright at all once the emergency lights drained their batteries. Taking out a crank-up radio, which also had an LED lamp, Meredith cranked it, and took it over to the window in her office. She was able to get a signal and listened to the news for a while.
It wasn’t good news. The power was out all over the city. “Going to be a long day and night,” Meredith muttered. She touched the window glass. “And cold, unless I miss my guess.” The window was cold. Meredith imagined she could feel the temperature inside dropping.
Double glad she had worn the clothing to the office that she had, Meredith knew that she would be able to handle the cold as the building cooled down, assuming the power stayed down. Unable to do any constructive work, Meredith kept the radio on, cranking it occasionally, but took out a book from the credenza and began to read by the light of the windup flashlight.
It took her through noon. She only put the engrossing novel down when her stomach growled slightly. “Time for lunch, I guess,” she said, getting up from the desk chair. She picked up the flashlight and headed to the employee lounge. She hadn’t noticed when the emergency lights went out. It was cool and gloomy in the office, except for her bright LED flashlight beam.
“Might as well save my food stash, if I can,” she said. “But I guess not,” she added when she saw the selection of snack foods in the honor box. There were more things, including some sandwiches in one vending machine, but she couldn’t get to them with the power down.
She could, actually, but opted not to break open the machine with the tools she had. It was the same with the soft drink machine. Push come to shove, she’d get the contents out one way or another. But those possibilities were for a real emergency. This didn’t qualify, in her mind.
So Meredith went back to her office, took out the bag in the credenza and took out a Millennium food ration bar, a bag of jerky, and a bag of homemade gorp. The three items satisfied her and she took several long drinks of water before going to the bathroom. She flushed the stool with the water from the trashcan, using the three gallon bucket she’d left sitting by the trashcan.
Meredith spent the rest of the afternoon reading and listening to the reports about the storm. Things were not getting better. “Hopefully, tomorrow,” she said about nine o’clock that evening. She took off the jacket and ski pants she’d put on about three, when she began to feel the chill in the air.
It took only few moments to open up a pair of space blankets and arrange herself on the sofa in Helen’s office for the night, the radio and flashlight both handy. She fell asleep listening to yet another report of transportation problems in the city due to what was now a full fledged blizzard. The last thought she had before she was asleep was, “Wonder how the rest of those in the building are doing?”
She didn’t have an answer when she woke up the next morning at her regular time. She hurried to the bathroom, and upon her return slipped back into the ski pants and the jacket, again leaving off the ski parka. She did put on the NEOS insulated boots over her pumps. Her feet were feeling the cold.
A breakfast identical to the meal the evening before, and Meredith went back to her reading and listening to the radio. She would stop reading occasionally to listen more closely to the reports being given on the radio. Things were bad. People were dying due to the storm.
And the thought that came to her from time to time when some relatively minor disaster occurred came again. “Why don’t people make even the simplest of preparations for things like this?” She shook her head and went back to reading. She couldn’t save the world. It was difficult taking care of herself sometimes.
A lunch from the honor box in the employee lounge kept her going to the evening. After finishing the book she’d started the day before, she took out another and continued her reading, becoming engrossed in the adventure story.
When she yawned and stretched, Meredith looked around. It was dark, except for the pool of light from the wind-up flashlight. Wanting something other than another food bar, jerky, and gorp meal, she dug a bit deeper into the credenza and pulled out her multi-fuel camp stove, teakettle, and a Mountain House freeze-dried camper’s entrée.
The MSR Dragonfly stove fired right up and she soon had hot water for the spaghetti and a hot cuppa tea.
Meredith turned in early, again sleeping between the space blankets on Helen’s sofa. The next morning, Meredith went to the bathroom and then slipped back between the space blankets. It was a Saturday. No reason she couldn’t sleep in.
It was almost noon when Meredith finally got up for the rest of the day. The sun was now shining through the building windows. Going quickly to the radio, she wound it up, and began to listen to the newest reports.
The sight of the sun had brought the hope that she could get home that afternoon. The news reports crashed that idea. It would be Monday, at the earliest, before the buses were running, and perhaps as late as Wednesday before power was restored to all of the city.
“Guess I’m here for the duration,” Meredith muttered and then went about her new daily routine.
With little to do except read and listen to the radio, Meredith found herself napping much of the time through Sunday. But she was up early Monday, cranking up the radio first thing after going to the bathroom.
She heard what she wanted to hear. The busses would be running that morning in most areas of the city. The DOT had been out all weekend clearing streets. And though the electrical power utility company had every person and piece of equipment working around the clock, there were still areas without power. The section of the city in which Meredith was located was one of those still without power.
Deciding that walking down fifteen flights of stairs would be worth it to get home, she gathered up her supplies and put them back into their hiding places, bundled up her outdoor clothing and headed down the stairs, being very careful not to fall.
Even though she stopped regularly to rest, her calves were burning when she made it to the lobby. She scared a year of life off the security guard manning the front lobby desk when she came up behind him.
“Gee-man-e lady! Don’t sneak up on people! How’d you get in here without me seeing you, anyway?” The guard was gruff, embarrassed to have been caught unawares.
“I’ve been stranded up on the fifteenth floor since the power went out Thursday.”
“What? How’d you manage that?”
“Oh, I managed,” Meredith replied. She wasn’t going to admit to her preps if she didn’t have to. Leaning against the desk, she dressed again for the cold, said good-bye to the guard, and went outside.
She felt on her face how cold it was. It was sunny, but it was cold. The radio weather report had indicated a temperature at or near zero. Meredith believed it. The slight breeze made it worse.
Again wishing she’d brought a wool scarf for her face, Meredith waited patiently for the bus, keeping her back to the breeze and her gloved hands on her cheeks. It was a short wait. She was the only passenger on the bus and the driver looked at her askance.
“You’re only the fourth person I’ve had today. You people are crazy.”
Meredith just smiled. She didn’t think she was the crazy one. The bus driver was dressed in the regular bus driver uniform. There was no sign of a jacket, much less a heavy coat. She wondered what the guy would do if he broke down on a day like today.
But she didn’t worry long. It was his decision. She wasn’t out to convert everyone in the world to her way of thinking.
Thankfully, her apartment building had power and Meredith didn’t have to walk up three floors to get to her apartment. She stripped out of the clothing and took a long hot bath, fighting to keep her eyes open in the luxurious warmth.
But she finally dragged herself out of the tub and wrapped up in her robe. No sooner had she left the bathroom, headed for the kitchen, when the telephone rang.
“Why aren’t you at work?” Helen’s angry voice said. “The power has been back on for almost an hour! You get to work right now, or you’re fired.”
“Yes, Helen. I’ll be right in.” A wry smile on her lips, Meredith went into the bedroom and dressed in fresh clothing. She took the time to gather a few preps to replace those she’d used, and carried them with her as she went back out into the cold. This time she was wearing a nice wool scarf in addition to her other winter clothing.
The sky had darkened while she was in the apartment, and now a very fine snow was falling. Meredith looked up at it, and with a sense of déjà vu, muttered again, “So much for global warming.”
End ********
Copyright 2010
Jerry D Young
 |
|
 |
|
The links above will open in a new window.
Logged
