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Old Posted Feb 13, 2007, 4:44 PM
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A Little Midwestern Snow - Feel Free to Add On

The weather folks call it a winter storm. It's snowing pretty good in Fort Wayne. I think "Winter Storm" is a bit exaggerated, though; if this were rain, it would be more like a steady drizzle than a downpour. Here are a couple of dirty-window shots from the comfort of my house; maybe I'll get out and take a walk after while.



From the window above the kitchen sink I saw a cardinal and a junco at the finch feeder. Ordinarily a cardinal wouldn't be caught dead hanging with that bitchy, flighty crowd, and a junco might sneak in but wouldn't want any of his friends to know. These are hard times, though, and options are limited. A finch tries to chat up the cardinal, while the junco keeps his back turned and tries to appear disinterested.

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Old Posted Feb 13, 2007, 6:03 PM
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Love the 2nd pic Rob. Diversity at the restaurant. The Weather Channel makes it sound as though Indiana is getting blizzard conditions. I guess it's all relative.
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Old Posted Feb 13, 2007, 6:11 PM
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MOEVIEW

Look at all the snow!! Duluth is practically buried in it!!!

My, what bountiful snow there is in the Upper Mid West!
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Old Posted Feb 13, 2007, 8:22 PM
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Originally Posted by Ex-Ithacan View Post
Love the 2nd pic Rob. Diversity at the restaurant. The Weather Channel makes it sound as though Indiana is getting blizzard conditions. I guess it's all relative.
Tom, I just realized that I was almost out of finch feed (they're picky), and the weather was getting worse, so I made a quick trip to the hardware store. Had I known how the streets are getting, I might have given the money to the birds and told them to get their own damn seed.

The snow is intensifying and the wind is picking up, and even in town it's almost whiteout conditions sometimes. It's that fine, grainy snow that drifts and flies on the wind, and then packs where it lands. The main thoroughfares are passable, but the side streets are getting pretty bad. There was almost no traffic except the contract snowplow guys going too fast in their 4WD pickups, and I think much of the city must be shut down. I hadn't been listening to the radio all morning, so I just turned it on to keep up.

Edit: This just in (3:20pm EST): Flights are cancelled and the airport is shutting down, and the city and surrounding areas have declared a snow emergency.

I think I'm in for the duration, at least as far as driving goes.
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Old Posted Feb 13, 2007, 8:58 PM
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^ Good luck Rob, and I know the birds appreciate your venturing out in the mess to get them feed.
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Old Posted Feb 15, 2007, 3:24 AM
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They called it a "blizzard!" **giggle**

It was a pretty decent snowstorm, but not a blizzard by any stretch. The high winds never materialized, and although today (Wednesday) was supposed to be cloudy & windy with occasional snow and blowing and drifting, the sun was out all day and the winds were moderate. Anyway, here are a few pictures from around the neighborhood. It was pretty cold out, and my hands got too cold to take very many.

This afternoon I walked over to the credit union beside the GE plant to deposit a check. I found a sign on the door saying all branches were closed today account of weather. I took a few pics on the way back. This entrance used to go to the employees' store before the era of K-Mart and Wal-Mart and all the other discounters. Employees could buy GE small appliances here at discounted prices. For large appliances, you went to an authorized dealer and got your best deal and then turned in the receipt for a rebate. You could even buy scratch & dent stuff that was already deeply discounted, and still get the full employee rebate.


College Street runs past the west end of the GE Broadway plant. We're looking north on College toward the overpass that connects the transformer operation with the warehouse built in the 1970s. They shipped most of the transformer manufacturing out of the US years ago, and recently sold the business altogether.

There's a railroad overpass hidden behind the warehouse overpass. It's on the one-time Pennsylvania Railroad mainline and carried passenger trains like the Broadway Limited. Now it's owned by CSX and leased to regional operator Rail America and operated by subsidiary, Chicago Fort Wayne & Eastern (CFE)


Note how they've plowed out the access drive and left the snow piled as an impassable barrier across the sidewalk that they didn't plow. Where the fence stands, a two-storey-plus-basement brick building once stood flush with the sidewalk. It was used for storage of oils & other flammable materials. It was razed about five years ago.


The old brick buildings that once stood on this site housed a factory that had produced hickory bicycle rims in the late nineteenth & early 20th centuries. When bicycle makers started using steel rims, they switched over to manufacturing bentwood furniture. I regret that I never took photos of that place when it was still in business.


Looking east on Wall Street through the GE complex. The brick building at the far end of the street, beyond the skywalks, is actually on the other side of Broadway; the complex spreads across two sides of that arterial. The 5-storey brick building on the right in the distance is where I started as a tool & diemaker apprentice in 1958. With a six-year break in service during and after my time in the USAF, I worked at GE in Fort Wayne until 1988.

I was hoping the security guard would come out and tell me I couldn't take pictures, so I could tell him to s**t in his hat and wear it. I used to have to put up with so much BS from those guys in the name of "company policy" that I'd relish giving it back to them.






Looking out from under the railroad underpass, showing more uncleared sidewalk. I guess since the company no longer uses the parking lots that it created by bulldozing three blocks of houses in the sixties, it feels that it doesn't have to maintain the walks any more.


One of the neighborhood streets being cleared by a resident with a 4x4 pickup & snow blade. You can tell that it's the work of a resident; the snow is pushed away from the parked cars and toward the no-parking side of the street. If a city plow operator had done it, the no-parking side would have been cleaned to the curb and all the snow would have been packed against, around and under the parked cars. No kidding! Never fails!


A lot of property owners just don't care. City ordinance requires that they clear their walks within 24 hours, but no one enforces it.


And then there are the clean-sidewalk Nazis (my house is the yellow one). Fortunately my neighbor is like-minded, and he's a young guy with lots of energy. When he finished his walk, he came over and helped me. Even if I had a fair-sized snow blower, I'd be hard-pressed to match the way he can move snow! Awesome to see him at work, and he never seems to get tired.


And again, some neighbors just don't give a s**t.






See what I mean about city plow operators? They accidentally got a little bit onto the river bank. They came down the street with three plows in tandem and could just as easily have angled their blades to push the snow to the riverbank side, but they shoved most of it against parked cars and into driveways. It was a mix of salt and snow, and packed hard as rock. I had to use a spade to break it up so I could dig my car out.


The Saint Marys River originates at Grand Lake St. Marys in Ohio and joins with the St. Joseph River in Fort Wayne to create the Little Baby Jesus, er, Maumee River. The Saint Marys is the source of the flooding that occurs in Decatur and Fort Wayne.




Looking east on Wayne Street. Most people had already dug out and left for work by the time the city plows got here, so it's in pretty good shape.




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Old Posted Feb 15, 2007, 4:28 AM
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Old Posted Feb 15, 2007, 1:22 PM
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I love the pics Rob. I got a couple of questions for ya. How old is your house (very cute place btw)? Are those additions on the front (toward the corner of the lot) and the rear (near the garage)? I bet you don't park the car in the garage, you use it as a workshop. And having a corner lot is great, until it comes to winter when you end up with twice as much sidewalk to shovel.

Thanks for the walking tour.
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Old Posted Feb 15, 2007, 1:50 PM
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Tom, the house had several additions. I've gutted it and seen the most intimate construction details, and I'd place the original structure, a storey-and-a-half version of the standard shotgun, around 1860. Over the years it was enlarged five times, with the last addition being the one-storey room on the front corner about 1937. It appears to have gotten a complete makeover at that time, with new Andersen windows throughout. Every part except the last one has a full, deep basement under it.

I bought it in 1977 for $14,500, and it was a little more than a pile of used lumber covered with vinyl siding then. I cleaned it up and made repairs and rented it out for about ten years, and then gutted it and rebuilt it with six inches of insulation in the walls, visqueen vapor barrier, and new heating, AC, plumbing & wiring.

Someplace I have a set of sketches of the evolution of the house, as well as photos of the whole process of gutting it and rebuilding it.

For several years I didn't own a vehicle that would fit the garage. Now that I do, I need to clean out the accumulated junk so I can use it again. I'm making progress, but that's on hold until the weather moderates. My workshop, also full of junk, is now in the basement of the house.
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Old Posted Feb 15, 2007, 2:42 PM
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^ You sir are the Bob Vila of SSP (and I mean that in only the best possible way). I wonder if Honest Abe ever spent any time there?
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Old Posted Feb 18, 2007, 7:42 PM
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