Snow doesn’t keep area from having a fun weekend.
By: Leon Tovey
While public works crews put in long hours clearing roads in the days surrounding last weekend’s massive snowstorm, many local residents decided to take some time to enjoy the first big snowfall of the winter.
News of the storm’s impending arrival at the end of last week led to a surge in video rentals at area stores like Next Level PC & Video on Spotswood-Englishtown Road in Monroe. Store manager Stephanie Kulpa said Tuesday that the store was twice as busy Jan. 21 and Saturday as it is on a normal weekend.
"People prepared early," Ms. Kulpa said. "On Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. we didn’t see a break."
Business at the Monroe Township Public Library was similarly heavy on Friday and Saturday.
Library assistant Jean Aniano said that on Saturday the library, which was open only from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., handled as many patrons as it normally does over the course of an entire 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. day.
Ms. Aniano said the library checked out 2,900 items mostly video cassettes and DVDs on Friday and Saturday. She said that because all of the library’s new video titles which made up the bulk of the checkouts have a two-day circulation limit, the library staff was busy on Monday and Tuesday as well when all those tapes and DVDs were returned.
"We’ve been hoppin’," she said Tuesday.
But not all area residents spent their snowbound hours perched on the couch with a book or a movie. Jim Sikorski, a manager at Better Living Discount Appliance & Hardware on East Railroad Avenue in Jamesburg, said the store sold around 125 gallons of paint Saturday about twice the usual amount.
"A lot of people said they were going to be stuck inside all weekend, so they might as well get some work done," Mr. Sikorski said.
By Monday however, both the motivated and the vegetated seemed to have spent enough time indoors.
With 16 inches of snow on the ground, schools closed for the day and many roads still too treacherous for commuting, hundreds descended on Thompson Park for a day of fun with snow and gravity.
They brought snowboards, sleds, toboggans, inner tubes, what looked like inflatable pool rafts, and just about every other imaginable object that could conceivably get them down a snow-covered hill.
"This is the hill," West Windsor resident Dave Lewinson said as he stood atop the larger of two hills in the park commonly used for sledding, looking down on a line of people hiking up.
Mr. Lewinson, who grew up in Monroe, said he had taken the day off from work to come to the hill with his daughter, Rebecca, a student at Thomas R. Grover Middle School in Princeton Junction. When pressed, however, he admitted to being there as much for his inner child as for his outer one.
"You have to take a day off for the hill," he said with a grin.
Some were fortunate enough not to have to take a day off, but had to pay in other ways. Debbie Hauptman of Monroe, a South River schoolteacher, got the day off due to school closure, but she still had to spend the day supervising children.
She spent most of Monday afternoon watching her son, Kyle, and a group of friends an assortment of what must be the Mill Lake, Brookside and Woodland schools’ wild-and-woolliest careen down the hill.
"It’s really great fun as long as no one gets hurt," Ms. Hauptman said.
No sooner were the words out of her mouth than Kyle and his friends went racing down the hill in a 10-sled-wide row, leaving a swath of laughing, flattened children in their wake. As the group neared the bottom of the hill, Mill Lake second-grader Alex Infosino broke off from the pack on his inner tube, pulled briefly ahead and spun out of control.
He was hit head on by the group and lifted 3 feet into the air by the impact. But his body hadn’t even hit the ground before he was up, proclaiming victory.
"Awesome!" he yelled.
Judy Olbrys, director of the Monroe Township Municipal Ambulance Service, was happy to report Tuesday that no injuries were reported due to Monday’s sledding activities.