Reflections on Snows Past
I must beg the dear reader's forgiveness for my pro-tracted absence from this inter-net communal confessional, as I have been engaged deeply in various study and sundry. Suffice it, for now, to say that the wait, when my fertile labors come to fruition, will be a small price to pay for such a pearl of great price as I am currently gestating within my shell (so to speak).
I read with nostalgic remorse- with agenbite of inwit, if you prefer- Master Nugington's account of the Blizzard of 1978, the Storm of the Century, as the ever-exploitative media were quick to dub it. I myself was then professing special topics in the philosophy of contemporary music (such topics inclusive of "Rock, Roll, Bullets, and Thorns: Sophia in the Corpus Nugentia") in the ivy-walled halls of Boston College. The gentle reader may well (and well should) react with surprise to such an indulgence, on my part, of popular culture, but such was the state of the union in Our Lord's Decade the nineteen-seventies. One must speak to one's students at their own level if one is to hope to make any impact. 'though, in retrospect, I was teaching the very youths who voted in Reagan, Bush the elder, and Clinton, and the efficacy of my technique thus remains open to question. But that is here and now, whilst the present topic was there and then, so to continue:
It may further bewilder you, Gentle Reader, to know that "hip"-ness was not my only ambition in teaching such degenerate topics. Truth be told, I myself had succumbed to that foul decade's vices: I was dating a student.
I will do the reader the service of allowing a few moments of broken pagination to allow that fact and the ramifications there-of to sink, by trickle and by flow, in.
Staci, who always dotted the I in her name with the most adorable of hearts. Staci, whose- dare I say? physical passion was matched only by her passion for disco, and exceeded only by her lust for better living by means of chemistry. Staci was inordinately fond of cocaine hydrochloride, although she positively despised the free-base form of the drug. As I was, and remain, an inveterate pipe-smoker, I preferred the base to the acid salt. But, Dear Reader, I was speaking of the blizzard.
We were en-nuzzled on her sitting-couch for most of the storm. Presently, our supplies (the reader will take my meaning) ran low, and we were thus forced to seek more, by hook or by crook, or, as the case demanded, by auto-mobile. We were thus forced to drive from her abodery in hallowed Cambridge to the dreaded South End. In retrospect, I can but wonder at the irony of such a wonderful drug leading its users to seek the company of such unsavory companionship as is requisite to "score" more.
And so it came to pass, that at the hour of four antemeridian, on the 8th February, 1978, Staci and I boarded my boat-sized Mercury and set sail for "Southie," there to meet the nebulous character known then and now to me only as Tony D.
All went smoothly- as smoothly as such operations can go under the captain-ship of such an operator as the humble author- until Brookline and Main. This, be'ware, was before Main St was officially sanctioned by the Commonwealth with a number. For all the present author knows, the unfolding of the events shortly to be detailed were intimately involved with that very numeration. What the author can say is that whilst he was reaching for his lighter for his smoking-pipe- whilst being "gone down" upon by dear, late Staci- he slid through the intersection and collided with, blind-side, a constabulary auto-car. Even then, the Route 2A-to-be was well-trafficked. Chaos ensued. Not the least element was the loss of dear Staci's life. And given the singular positioning of her jaws, she did not depart this world alone.
If I seem ineffectual and effete, then know now that there is a very real and physiological explanation therefor. On that awful day, I lost not only the means, but the ways as well, of my love. Alas! But I do wholly hope that the reader is not over-much perturbed by this revelation of my emasculation. As our ever-more incorrigible youth are wont to say: Life sucks, and then it bites.
I read with nostalgic remorse- with agenbite of inwit, if you prefer- Master Nugington's account of the Blizzard of 1978, the Storm of the Century, as the ever-exploitative media were quick to dub it. I myself was then professing special topics in the philosophy of contemporary music (such topics inclusive of "Rock, Roll, Bullets, and Thorns: Sophia in the Corpus Nugentia") in the ivy-walled halls of Boston College. The gentle reader may well (and well should) react with surprise to such an indulgence, on my part, of popular culture, but such was the state of the union in Our Lord's Decade the nineteen-seventies. One must speak to one's students at their own level if one is to hope to make any impact. 'though, in retrospect, I was teaching the very youths who voted in Reagan, Bush the elder, and Clinton, and the efficacy of my technique thus remains open to question. But that is here and now, whilst the present topic was there and then, so to continue:
It may further bewilder you, Gentle Reader, to know that "hip"-ness was not my only ambition in teaching such degenerate topics. Truth be told, I myself had succumbed to that foul decade's vices: I was dating a student.
I will do the reader the service of allowing a few moments of broken pagination to allow that fact and the ramifications there-of to sink, by trickle and by flow, in.
Staci, who always dotted the I in her name with the most adorable of hearts. Staci, whose- dare I say? physical passion was matched only by her passion for disco, and exceeded only by her lust for better living by means of chemistry. Staci was inordinately fond of cocaine hydrochloride, although she positively despised the free-base form of the drug. As I was, and remain, an inveterate pipe-smoker, I preferred the base to the acid salt. But, Dear Reader, I was speaking of the blizzard.
We were en-nuzzled on her sitting-couch for most of the storm. Presently, our supplies (the reader will take my meaning) ran low, and we were thus forced to seek more, by hook or by crook, or, as the case demanded, by auto-mobile. We were thus forced to drive from her abodery in hallowed Cambridge to the dreaded South End. In retrospect, I can but wonder at the irony of such a wonderful drug leading its users to seek the company of such unsavory companionship as is requisite to "score" more.
And so it came to pass, that at the hour of four antemeridian, on the 8th February, 1978, Staci and I boarded my boat-sized Mercury and set sail for "Southie," there to meet the nebulous character known then and now to me only as Tony D.
All went smoothly- as smoothly as such operations can go under the captain-ship of such an operator as the humble author- until Brookline and Main. This, be'ware, was before Main St was officially sanctioned by the Commonwealth with a number. For all the present author knows, the unfolding of the events shortly to be detailed were intimately involved with that very numeration. What the author can say is that whilst he was reaching for his lighter for his smoking-pipe- whilst being "gone down" upon by dear, late Staci- he slid through the intersection and collided with, blind-side, a constabulary auto-car. Even then, the Route 2A-to-be was well-trafficked. Chaos ensued. Not the least element was the loss of dear Staci's life. And given the singular positioning of her jaws, she did not depart this world alone.
If I seem ineffectual and effete, then know now that there is a very real and physiological explanation therefor. On that awful day, I lost not only the means, but the ways as well, of my love. Alas! But I do wholly hope that the reader is not over-much perturbed by this revelation of my emasculation. As our ever-more incorrigible youth are wont to say: Life sucks, and then it bites.
