Author: Jack Flacco

Almost three weeks ago, Toronto and the surrounding vicinity had its power cut from under its feet. Living an hour north from the greater metropolitan, we came out of the disaster unscathed. Other than a few felled trees, we had a virtual behemoth of ice blanketing the area. But we retained our power. That in itself is miraculous. And why wouldn’t Freedom Friday describe the event as anything but?

I awoke to the sound of silence. Unusual, I thought. The neighbor’s dog should have been out barking in the backyard. A car or two should have been traveling on our street to work. I wouldn’t have known what to make of it until I hopped from my bed and peeked through the blinds to discover everything coated in ice. I felt I was living a real-life scene from the movie The Day After Tomorrow where New York City fell under a sub-arctic weather mass.

My first instinct to call my parents proved unproductive. Their phone gave me a busy signal, which meant one of two things—they were talking with my sister about the storm or they’d lost power and weren’t home. Sure enough, my sister had called to let me know my folks were over at her place after having lost power. The region had shut down and no sign of any visible progress would be forthcoming for the next seventy-two hours.

Meanwhile, I had my own dilemma. Even though we hadn’t lost electricity, we had a driveway covered in a foot of ice. It looked like a literal skating rink out there. When I dared make the trek outside, the five steps from our home mocked me with the words, “treacherous”, “lethal”, and “deadly”. The steps were non-existent, replaced by a hill that wasn’t there the night before. I negotiated the anomaly without compromising my safety.

Once at the bottom, I slid to the edge of our driveway. Had I known then what I know now, I would have never slept. Instead, I would have chosen to stay up all night to ensure the bottom of the driveway remained clear. Well, that didn’t work as expected. I stared at the mound to the mouth of the driveway and measured it to be three feet, more or less. That’s three feet of solid ice. I knew I was in trouble.

Surely, I thought, my snow thrower would rescue me from days of attempting to find the bottom of my driveway. I didn’t know what I was doing. I revved the engine, aimed for the ice and—nothing happened. The machine threw its hands in the air not even recognizing the ice and laughed at me. Okay, so maybe my optimism got the best of me.

Next, I put away the snow thrower and went to Plan B: I lined my pockets with cash and waited at the foot of the driveway on the mound of ice that held my weight without a problem. As the cars passed by my street, I held my breath. I hoped upon hope for relief. I didn’t know if it would come, but I kept my wits about me and remained confident.

Half-an-hour later, reinforcements came in the form of a plow. With a pocket full of cash, I felt confident we’d win. And win we did. We managed to get the whole driveway plowed for a $20 bill. Imagine my relief.

Well, that was one problem out of the way. It didn’t help my stair problem. What to do with all the ice that had made my steps a ski slope? Unfortunately, folks, this I had to take care of myself utilizing a spade fork to break up the ice. Three hours later, I’d cleared the steps.

Now, this is all very well and fine, but it doesn’t compare to the satisfaction of digging out our neighbor across the street from this mess. But that’s another story.

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Did you experience the ice storm of 2013? What did you have to do to dig yourself out of its clutches?