Blizzard

All during a late afternoon in early March, Chicago radio station B96 kept interrupting their music to air weather bulletins. They predicted at least six more inches of snow overnight with a possibility of more for Northwest Indiana.

As I sat at my cubicle thinking I should head home soon and not put in overtime tonight, an auditor approached me. “This one must be done tonight.”

I glanced at the time. It was after 4. “Can’t it wait until morning?”

“No.” He quickly turned and walked away.

Muttering curses under my breath, I headed to Bennett’s office. He had become one of the tax partners last year, and I worked under his direction. When I knocked on his doorjamb, he told me to come in.

I looked out his windows at the steadily falling snow and pointed. “Quite a storm out there.”

Bennett nodded. “Been coming down for quite a while. What can I do for you?”

“Ron Harvey just gave me the Wilmont Real Estate partnership return. Said it has to be done tonight, and can’t wait until morning. There’s no way I can get it done before 7, and it’s really storming out there. It’ll be treacherous getting back home to Indiana in this weather. If I stay to do it, will he even be here when it’s done?”

Bennett lifted his receiver and chatted with the auditor. When he hung up, he said, “Ron will be here waiting.”

Cursing all the way back, I slammed the massive proforma onto my desktop. Then I made a fresh pot of coffee. After getting a full cup, I crunched the numbers for every sheet before I entered the input for the tax return. Half an hour later, I hit the computer’s enter button to begin the computation. In the past, this gigantic partnership’s information had been shipped to California to be done on Computax’s mainframe. This was only the second tax season, we had the capability to compute it in-house.

I looked at the time, then called my sister who lived near me. “Martha could you please pick my kids up from the sitter. I can’t leave here for another hour. Yes, I know it’s storming. Oh thank you. I’ll call Celia and tell her you’re coming.”

I viewed the diagnostics on the screen twenty minutes later. There weren’t any keying errors, so I loaded a fresh ream of paper into the printer, then sent the 600+ partners and ten multistate tax return to print.

By the time it finished, everyone on my floor had gone home. When I took it upstairs to the audit department, no one was there! I didn’t bother to mutter my curses. The mildest one was, “Lying sack of shit!”

Back down on my floor, I turned off the coffee pot. At my cubicle, I shut off my computer. I then pulled on my boots, put on my long, goose-filled corduroy coat, then my scarf, gloves, and felt hat. Down on the main level, even the bar was deserted. I had to push extremely hard on the revolving door to get outside. My feet were soon damp because the snow came over my boot tops. Crossing over the bridge for the Chicago River was difficult because a layer of ice was underneath the snow. Past it, a maintenance man was pushing a snow blower. I was thankful for the cleared pathway.

Once I was in my Dodge minivan and had it warming up, I decided to get on the nearest expressway rather than take city backstreets for several miles. The radio station’s latest weather alert had convinced me. I didn’t know it, but boy was I wrong!

Though I had worked in Chicago for a decade, I had seldom been on the Eisenhower Expressway. My wipers were on high, and I could barely see through the white shit that was falling so fast. Knuckles white gripping my steering wheel, I inched my way to it. Soon after entering the on-ramp, I saw a parked vehicle in the right-hand passing lane. The next one was almost hidden on the left shoulder. Towering skyscrapers should have been visible, yet all I could see was a sea of white. Even the concrete meridian was blocked by blowing snow.

The winds whipped up, down, then around on this elevated highway. I reduced my speed to below 20 miles per hour. “Lord, please let me get home to my kids safely tonight.” The next abandoned vehicle was in the middle lane. I looked in the rearview mirror, but it had iced up. I took a deep breath and inched into the left lane, correcting when my van started to skid. I thought about stopping to remove the ice, but I was afraid I’d get stuck. At last, I saw the Dan Ryan sign and made my way onto it.

Here on flat ground, I increased my speed. While the snow came down with intensity, the winds didn’t whip it nearly as much. When a semi passed me, I moved over into its lane to follow it. At a safe distance, I sped up to continue to view its red tail lights. I was happy when it turned onto the Kingery bypass. A mile later, I was on the Bishop Ford freeway. The last major snow hurdle would be making it safely over the steel bridge. When I reached it, my grip tightened on my steering wheel as I ascended. I removed my foot from the gas on the decline, not wanting to brake and go into a skid.

Five miles later, I took the entrance to the Borman Expressway. It was freshly plowed. Ten minutes later, I turned off onto the Indianapolis Boulevard exit, then waited for the light to turn on 175th Avenue. A plow had recently been through, and the city street was relatively clear when I drove past the high school. I inched my way down the alley and slowly drove into my garage. “Thank you Lord!”

Indoors my sister was dozing on my couch. I grabbed a glass of wine then woke her. “Were my kids any problem?”

Martha shook her head. “No. I fed them a frozen pizza then they took their baths. They’re hoping for a snow day tomorrow.”

I laughed. “Doubt it. There’s a lot more snow in Chicago than here for once. My drive was a nightmare until I reached Indiana. Do you want to spend the night?”

“No. I’d better get home to Jerry.”

I hugged her. “Drive safe!”

“I will!”