Cooling off after ‘The Beast of the East’

PERCEPTIONS by Steve Feitl

By: Steve Feitl
   So did you dig out OK?
   I’m glad to hear it because I was really concerned there for a while. After all, we did just survive "The Beast of the East," as dubbed by cable news outlets. I’d like to take that line of thought a step further and call this week’s blizzard what it truly was:
   "The Storm of the Century."
   That’s right, this entire area was blanketed with snow thanks to a fierce storm the likes of which no 3-year-old has ever seen.
   But that’s the problem. The rest of us who are beyond their preschool years have seen large snow storms before. (I’m making a leap of faith here that The Lawrence Ledger does not have a large preschool readership.) Yet, we all probably know someone who just freaked out at the thought of being snowed in.
   Let’s be realistic for a moment. We got hit by the biggest snowstorm of the past decade this week and it shut us down for exactly one day. Perhaps I’m not being clear enough. We were snowed in for one whole day. Sure, many people still had off from work and school on Tuesday, but many did not. The roads were clear, for the most part. Nearly all stores were open. Life went on.
   Frankly, it doesn’t get much worse in these parts than the storm we experienced this week and it still only confined us to our homes for a single day.
   So can someone explain to me the scene at the supermarkets Sunday? I had the misfortune of visiting a local grocery store the day before the storm. I promise you it wasn’t so I could stock up on my nonperishable food items, not to mention the three essentials we all know — bread, milk and eggs. No, Sunday is simply the easiest day to buy groceries for the week.
   But for many other people, it seemed to be the eve of Armageddon. The carts were full, the shoppers were frantic and the store owners were laughing all the way to the bank. You couldn’t find any chicken breasts; they were gone. Frankly, the eggs and milk sections were still pretty well stocked, but the bottled water aisle was a virtual ghost town.
   And let’s not forget the bread. Actually, I had to forget about getting a loaf of bread because they were wiped out long before I arrived. I overheard an employee telling another concerned shopper that someone had come in earlier in the day and bought a shopping cart full of bread.
   Let’s examine that for a moment. I imagine a "shopping cart full of bread" to be something along the lines of 20 loaves. Now maybe there was a perfectly good explanation for it. Maybe he was in charge of doing the shopping for his entire community. Maybe he was donating it all to a food drive. Maybe he was a restaurant owner who forgot to place a bread order.
   But the cynic in me says he was bunkering up for the long haul. And if that’s true, I have to meet this guy because he must be able to work magic. That bread was obviously meant to last him a long time, but I know I can’t keep bread from spoiling for more than a week.
   The bottom line is the whole supermarket scene was an exercise in hysteria. It was people overreacting to a moderate inconvenience. There’s something to be said for making sure you have some food in your house the day before a storm because, as we witnessed this week, you might not be able to get out for a day, maybe two. But that’s where it ends.
   Keep it in perspective and enjoy the next snow day we have.
   Leave the paranoia to the people checking to see if the snow has damaged their duct-taped plastic-covered homes.
   And that, of course, is a whole other rant.
Steve Feitl is the managing editor of The Lawrence Ledger. He can be reached via e-mail at [email protected].