Snow Flaked Folly

Shovel. Dump. Scrape. Throw. My mind is filled with thoughts of how it must have been 100 years ago in this town that I love. I love it for more than the speedway. Even though I spent the better part of the night over strong cocktails, in deep discussion about what makes the track what it is and what needs to be done to bring it back to it’s former glory, I love Oswego for more than that.

The snow doesn’t really bother me. The cold, while frigid and bone chilling, is actually refreshing. I think back. The struggles that made this town great. Past the Modern Age, beyond the Industrial Age, further yet to the Civil War era, back beyond that to the Revolution. What was it like to be here in this town before the speedway existed?

The track brought me here. The pull, the need to be who I am. But once here, I have found so much more. The people, the feeling of something more powerful. I am sucked in. Enveloped. It’s so much more than people sometimes realize. We take for granted the grit that Oswegonians and Upstaters in general must have to survive the foracious winters and short summers. Being a “Laker” now takes on new meaning. Am I one? Am I still an outcast from Indiana?

More and more I feel as though I have lost my Hoosier heritage. IT’s as if I have been a New Yorker from the first time I set foot in the state in 1985. I wonder why that is?

I shovel more snow and think about coal fired furnaces as the smelll of burning wood slides past my nose. It reminds me of campfires at Classic and I smile. Then I see him. A man walking down the middle of 7th Street. I watch as he slowly approaches. Stumbling aimlessly as he holds his coat closed against the wind from the lake. I sense that he is drunk, surely the wind is not THAT bad to make him walk so crooked down the straight street. He carries a plastic bag, yet, I see him in 19th century clothes. Maybe a longshoreman, out for a night from his Great Lakes Schooner, here from the ice cold waters of the St. Lawrence, calling Oswego home for a night. He comes closer, he’s obviously cold, he staggers and walks the crooked line of a drunkard.
I shovel more and enjoy the sting of the northern air. I glance at him as he crosses in front of my house. Part of me wants to call out and say, ‘hello, how are you?” part of me watches in wonder as he continues past my place and on his way toward Bridge Street. I wonder where he is going. It’s not really late yet. But it’s cold, the snow is coming down and the wind is bitter. He wears his baseball cap and I think about how comfortable I am in my Lancaster Brewing beanie.

I watch him pass, finish my second shoveling in two hours and begin to walk toward the screen door. I stop to look back. I’ve lost him. I had a chance to pay him goodwill, and I passed it up. I say to myself but outloud, “There but for the Grace of God go I.”

And so it is on this Friday night in the port town of Oswego. I am lucky and thankful to have what I have in the town that I love.