I'm guessing that I wasn't the only person who got stuck a few times driving home from work last night. For me, my car stopped moving near an intersection outside my office, then again a block from home.
And both times, strangers came out of nowhere to help.
People I didn't know dropped their shovels and started pushing. I saw the same scene repeated by entire route home.
Isn't it great when people help out their fellow Milwaukeeans? These blizzards seem to present an almost festive mood, and that rare "snow day" mentality takes over. Everyone's got a story to tell, and no one is complaining. I think the hearty Midwesterner really shines when the local weather people go in to freak out mode.
It's the same conversation I had with my neighbors as we shoveled and pushed around snowblowers last night. With a foot of snow on the ground, it's too silly to get upset. After the inevitable "Why do we live here?" conversation, it's always followed up, "You know what, it's just snow. People need to chill."
I, too, am daydreaming about spring right now. But since I can't will the snow to melt, I can at least warm my heart with thoughts of strangers helping strangers. As my co-worker John said yesterday after giving a minivan a push, "You gotta pay it forward."
Andy is the president, publisher and founder of OnMilwaukee. He returned to Milwaukee in 1996 after living on the East Coast for nine years, where he wrote for The Dallas Morning News Washington Bureau and worked in the White House Office of Communications. He was also Associate Editor of The GW Hatchet, his college newspaper at The George Washington University.
Before launching OnMilwaukee.com in 1998 at age 23, he worked in public relations for two Milwaukee firms, most of the time daydreaming about starting his own publication.
Hobbies include running when he finds the time, fixing the rust on his '75 MGB, mowing the lawn at his cottage in the Northwoods, and making an annual pilgrimage to Phoenix for Brewers Spring Training.
