Flashback Sunday

As I type this, the sun is out, the skies are blue, and it's 51 degrees.  Pretty warm for the middle of January.  It's hard to believe that 21 years ago today, Louisville was hit with a record snowfall.  On the morning of January 18, 1993, Louisville woke up to 18 inches of snow on the ground.  Yep, a foot and a half of snow.  The night before, they were just calling for a dusting of snow and maybe a little freezing rain.  And the city of Louisville was shut down for over a week.  

I remember that morning like it was yesterday.  I heard the 'Rents up, so I got up to see what was going on.  The house was dark because the power was off, and they had just come in from trudging out past the garden to bring in some firewood for the fireplace.  They had a roaring fire going, and Mom had the old school blue metal cowboy coffee pot over the fire.  After about a half hour of us warming ourselves in front of the fire, we heard a car horn, and then we saw two headlights. It was the infamous Teal Taxi, aka the Blazer driven by our old family friend/my company CEO Uncle Don.  The night before at church, Uncle Don told me that if it was bad in the morning, he would come pick me up for work.  Surely a foot and a half of snow equaled "bad".  But not for the Teal Taxi.  He came in the house, dressed like Nanook of the North and looked at me and said "Are you gonna wear your pajamas in to work?"  I got the hint and went to get dressed.  In the meanwhile, Uncle Don got a grocery bag and went to our pantry and filled it up with some supplies for our trip to work.  

Believe me when I tell you we were the only car out on the Greenbelt Highway and Cane Run Road. It was very slow going, but we made it with no problems. I should say the problems waited until we got into the office.  At this time, we worked in the infamous United Furniture Building, an old small two-story building.  When we walked in, that's when we had problems.  The pipes in the downstairs lunchroom had burst, so Uncle Don started working on that mess.  When I walked upstairs to the offices, I quickly saw snow on the desks, floors, and on top of filing cabinets.  Parts of the roof had caved in from the weight of the snow.  We found a small shovel and I opened a couple of windows and shoveled the snow from inside the building.  Then I got as many big garbage bags as I could find and cut them open and covered up the filing cabinets and computers.  This took up pretty much of our day at work. 

When we went home that evening, once again, we were pretty much the only car out on the roads.  But we both noted how every liquor store and bar on the way home had their parking lots cleared of all 18 inches of snow.  The same could not be said for the United Building.