Shot in the Dark

Y’Know How You Know Western Civilization Is Collapsing?

Friday night, I was out with some friends out at a bar on Lake Street in Minneapolis.  I’d heard there was a thunderstorm warning – but I didn’t expect the deluge we got.  I think the wind got up to 60-70 miles an hour on Lake.  The power went out, and stayed out.  As I walked back to my car (unscathed, thank goodness, unlike a few cars up and down the street), I thought “this is gonna be a doozy”.

I started trying to find my way back to Saint Paul; I drove around South Minneapolis, checking out the extent of the damage and the power outage; the damage lessened the further east you went, but many roads were blocked; there were pockets of power up into the thirties, but for the most part Minneapolis was blacked out down to 46th, sometimes 50th and further.

Along about 10 o’clock, I wondered “what’s Saint Paul like?”  And for that matter the rest of the metro?

So I flipped to WCCO, expecting to hear their usual severe-storm-and-aftermath patter; Mike Lynch and a crew of newspeople talking about the storm, and taking calls from people around the metro with their observations.

LYNCH: “Tom in Prior Lake, go ahead”.

TOM IN PRIOR LAKE: “Ya, da wind come up and a maple tree about yea big fell down on da shed”

LYNCH: “How big?”

TOM IN PRIOR LAKE: “Yea big”

This is how WCCO has been doing weather since the earth’s crust cooled.

So I flipped the radio to 830 – no, it’s not a preset on my car.

And what did we get?

“Best of Mischke”.

Weather on the 20s.  I think.

And now the world has changed for the worse.

Posted

in

,

by

Mitch Berg

Tags:

Comments

2 responses to “Y’Know How You Know Western Civilization Is Collapsing?”

  1. Seflores Avatar
    Seflores

    For better or worse, the pretend scenario above trained many people to constantly worry, watch and pretend it’s the worst weather ever in the history of the planet. My spouse mainlines weather doom & gloom by keeping constant vigil via an Ipad. I’d rather listen to the “Best of Mischke” (scare quotes entirely appropriate) than hear Tom in Prior Lake call in about his ‘yea big’ tree.

  2. Joe Avatar
    Joe

    Yesterday at about 8AM I was weaving my way through the residential area east of Uptown avoiding downed trees. As I passed a MPLS Streets Dept. occupied 3X and followed by a woman on foot with a bucket of street crack sealer, I came upon the largest downed tree I’d seen in our path.

    After making a U-turn due to the impassable road, I couldn’t help but notice how nice and smooth the roadway was, with nice, newly-filled cracks.

    I wonder if the crew of crack sealers had to stop and wait for a crew of MPLS Tree Removal Department workers to move the branches for them?

    Look for the union label …

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.