Read the article below... This comical scene made the front page of our Fort Wayne News Paper. It is great being the photographer... you will never see how bad I looked. And yes, I really went to Walmart looking like that too. I do things like that you know... :-) I do want to add: Angelina does have boots and gloves. She wears her UGG type boots and they are fine... But, not for this amount of snow. :) There, I had to say that... I am a good mom... lol...
Blizzard of helping hands
Level 1 emergency keeps city streets quiet; Neighbors push out cars, clear sidewalks
FORT WAYNE – With her 10-year-old daughter packed into the van and her plaid pajama pants tucked into her boots, Rebekah Hubley got behind the wheel, turned the ignition, backed out of her driveway and tried to swing around the cul-de-sac where she lives.
Then the van stopped – smack in the middle of some deep snow missed by the plows earlier in the day.
Hubley tried to go forward. Her tires spun. She tried to go backward. She was still stuck. Soon, her husband, clad in a sweat shirt and athletic shorts, was out. Her neighbors followed. They had shovels.
And a snowblower.
For many, Blizzard 2011 quickly turned into a big dig as the snow that blanketed the area the past two days stopped falling and people began venturing outside.
And wherever a driveway needed to be shoveled, a sidewalk cleared or a car pushed out and freed from the clutches of the piled-up snow, Fort Wayne residents seem to have been ready with a helping hand.
“This is just neighbors helping neighbors,” said Janice Hayden, who helped dig out Hubley’s van at Mowhawa and Kendawa drives.
At first, it was slow going. The city was nearly a ghost town in the early morning.
With schools and many businesses closed – plus a Level 1 emergency in effect for Allen County, meaning only emergency vehicles were to be on the road – the morning rush-hour traffic along West Jefferson Boulevard and Interstate 69 was non-existent.
Not until noon, when the Level 1 emergency was downgraded to Level 2, did people really begin to go outside, if at all.
“Yeeehaaaawww,” Hubley yelled as her van was finally pushed out of the snow after about 20 minutes of back-and-forth driving, her tires screeching and smoking while she pulled the vehicle into her neighbor’s driveway.
About 1:30 p.m., Hubley was trying to get to Walmart so she could buy her daughter, who she recently adopted from China, new boots and gloves.
Her neighbors jokingly chided her for not getting those things before now, even with all the warnings leading up to this week’s storm.
“We just don’t look like this on a normal day,” Hubley jokingly said of the situation – her and her neighbors in pajamas, her husband in shorts, all the while trying to get a van unstuck from the snow.
Snow totals in Allen County ranged from about 7 inches to 12.6 inches, with about 10 inches officially in Fort Wayne, according to the website of the National Weather Service of Northern Indiana.
So it’s no surprise that stories similar to Hubley’s abound.
The Campbell family of Fort Wayne received a call from parents of a friend who live in their subdivision in Waynedale, Christi Pettys Campbell said, because the parents needed dug out and their son lives too far away to help.
So, Campbell’s husband, Derek, took their three children, ages 7 to 12, to help out their neighbors.
“They took shovels, snowblower and great attitudes with them,” Christi Campbell said in an e-mail. “Learning at this age that you help those who can’t … it’s what will hopefully stay with them for a long time to come.”
Campbell said she hopes her children remember this when they grow up – and that their dad helped as many on the block as he could each time he went out just because he could, not because he expected or wanted anything in return.
On the south side of town, Ken Howard’s pickup truck was stuck.
He spent a half hour shoveling around its parking spot on the street in front of his Hoagland Avenue home. He tried to push it out, drive it out, everything he could.
Not until his son, K.J. Howard, arrived were they able to push it free.
And where was Howard trying to go? That’s not entirely clear.
“Now that I’m out, I’m not sure what to do,” he said while laughing and driving off.
That seemed to be the case for many.
Glenbrook Square and Jefferson Pointe, the two large malls in the city, looked abandoned as many of their stores were closed. Walmart on Apple Glen Boulevard had few customers at 2:30 p.m., and the parking lots for many restaurants were sparsely populated.
Though the morning seemed dead other places, breakfast was still hopping at Cindy’s Diner downtown on Wayne Street.
John Scheele, the diner’s co-owner and cook, said he ignored the Level 1 emergency and decided to open in the morning at the usual time.
“Somebody has to feed the snowplow people and wrecker drivers,” Scheele said during the lunch hour as a pair of wrecker drivers swapped stories at the end of the diner.
Some of the regulars weren’t at breakfast like usual, Scheele said, but they were replaced by people he had never seen before. Many walked there. Someone with a shovel cleared the entire walkway in front of the diner.
“I have no idea who shoveled it,” Scheele said. “It was a free gesture, I guess.”
For many, it was just as well that many of the businesses closed and there was nowhere to go – it gave them a free, unexpected day with the family.
Rafael Sanchez walked down Webster Street toward Rudisill Boulevard about 1 p.m. with son Jonathan atop his shoulders. Next to him strolled his wife, Maribel, and his other son, Juan. They had just visited the in-laws, Sanchez said.
With the sun out and the side roads bad, it was a good day for a walk.
A truck driver for a floral shop in Fort Wayne, Sanchez did not know until the morning that he would not be working Wednesday. Now, he could watch a soccer game with his boys. Barcelona was playing Almeria in a Spanish King’s Cup match.
“Do you know Barcelona?” Sanchez asked. “They are the best. They have so many good players.”
As he talked, one of his sons excitedly repeated “Barc-e-lon-aaa.” Sanchez reeled off a few players to watch for and pondered the team’s chances in future European Cup play. They’re good, he said. Real good.
Then, hand in hand with his boys, he walked home.
Barcelona won 3-0.
Joyce McCartney of The Journal Gazette contributed to this story.
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