A place to wait

Yesterday's wet and heavy snow turned to cement, broke tree limbs all night. and knocked out the power. It was cold getting up this morning and it sucked digging out. This is winter in New England. That's how it is. But I've been reading about someone traveling through Russia. Yakutsk. The people there would be in speedos here, tanning. There was a story about when prisoners in that hard frozen part of the world planned an escape from a work camp, they'd enlist one of the more innocent minded political prisoners to come with them. The political prisoner having no idea that he was to be the nutrition for the others when the going got hard. 

After shoveling, I drove down to the city 10 miles from here. Up on this hill, everything is heavily encased in frozen white, and the temperature didn't break 32 degrees all day. Down below, there's a few inches of snow, the trees are bare and everything looks normal and easily managed. I find a place, order food, drink some beer, warm my bones and let the shoveling sweat dry on my back. Time passes. Football games on TV screens. Local people fill the place - with social distancing measures taken by management. 

I don't know any of them personally but I do know their faces. Most of them look like Irish descendants or mixes, like me. I've seen these sorts of faces most of my life here. They still talk the same way. They still say the same things. It's fine. But it makes me want to go away.