Snowmaggedon--the Musical!

There are times in this life when you just happen to be in the right place, on the right train platform, on the right day, and good things happen. Such was the case with yours truly, which is how I fulfilled my ultimate destiny and became a Spy. Or, to be more specific, a History Spy. The uninspired might simply call it a research job in Washington, D.C., but that would never cover the full scope of my new occupation. I have a fedora, for Heaven’s sake. And I have an overcoat from a vintage shop in Greenwich that was obviously owned by a spook before it was passed over to me. And since the good old days of button-cameras and lipsticks guns have cruelly abandoned us, spies like me must practice our craft where we can.

I was sent on a mission to the National Archives, armed with my rapier-like intellect and a truly killer pair of boots. After spending a lovely weekend with Kelsey (code name: Guy Burgess), I arrived at my godparent’s daughter’s house, which was serving as my operations base for the week. I had a car, I had a room to myself, and I even got siblings for the week. Or godnieces, for us only children who will never have the real thing.

Day 1: Arrived at the National Archives after a fun-filled trip down The Beltway. Drivers in Maryland are disarmingly polite. Coming from a state that treats lane-changes as a test of Darwinian proportions, to not only be allowed to merge into another lane, but to all but be welcomed with a banner and some light refreshment was more than a little unnerving. Also, they travel the speed limit. I haven’t driven 55 miles per hour on a highway since the week I got my license. But these people seem to have a lock on their car that keeps them from even considering pushing the envelope to 56.

The Archives might very well be the most secure entity outside of the Vatican. It took me over an hour to pass the gauntlet of identity checks, interrogations and figuring out how in the hell the keys to the lockers worked. Then, as a further test of your endurance, adaptability and skills in subversion, no one tells you how to request materials. You must, by yourself, distill a crumb of reason from the giant, molten vat of record groups, incomplete finding aids, illegible forms in triplicate, and, finally, pass beneath the scrutiny of the cranky archivist who spends his spare time discussing alien abductions in the American mid-west. These trials were as nothing to a seasoned spy like me. Which is my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Day 2: Having confirmed my identity with the litany of security staff, I am able, at last, to get some real work done. Am slightly distracted by the two visitors at the table beside me who are discussing Aunt May’s swollen ankles, but manage to forge bravely ahead. I grow increasingly annoyed with the policy of timed pulls, which limits me to three or four record-groups a day. Essentially, if you get stuck with a batch of stuff that is utterly useless (I’m looking at you, Record Group 331), you’re stuck with it for an hour until the next one shows up. However, into each Spy’s cup a few tears must tumble, so we press on.

My return to base is foiled by a snow squall—charming wintertime event that coats the ground and lends a little sparkle to the hair and coats of passers-by. As well as reinventing my 20 minute commute home into a 95 minute crawl up a highway full of people clinging to their steering wheels and screaming for mercy from the vengeful gods that have seen fit to punish them with this white fluff from the heavens. I am still ushered into other lanes with a southern charm and if only there was something on the radio, things might have been very nearly passable.

Day 3: An otherwise uneventfully productive day is interrupted by a weather bulletin: there is a storm of near-Biblical proportions bearing down on the D.C. –Maryland area. Being a hardly daughter of Massachusetts winters, I scoff at the radio and call out the reports as mendacity and hyperbole. And in doing so, miss my exit and nearly enter Delaware.

Day 4: The reports have grown increasingly hysterical as the day progresses. Essentially, it is going to be a foot of snow. The more frenzied reports are suggesting it could be as much as a yard of snow and that, truly, the end is nigh. I stay at the Archives until they close at nine and return home with secrets to share, trepidation in my gut and a case of eye-strain that is, oddly, making everything look blue.

Day 5: The Archives should be open until nine tonight. However, due to the imminent fury that is about to be unleashed upon the innocents of Maryland, they have announced that they will close at five. Which means I still get my three pulls of material and there is a chance that I might actually accomplish something useful before inevitably being trapped in the house for two days.

That morning, I simultaneously run out of shampoo, conditioner and gum (all critical spy-tools, in the right hands), and thus have to make a stop at the nearest store before Archive Espionage can start. And it is in the market that I notice strange things. People are wandering the aisles with glazed and shattered gazes, their carts full to overflowing with cans of soup, boxes of pasta and hot dogs. One woman is buying six gallons of water and four jumbo-packages of Bounty paper towels. Another has three cases of bottled water, enough toilet paper to make mummy Halloween costumes for my entire neighborhood, and has an entirely separate carriage for her non-perishables, including Fire-Starter logs, candles and powdered milk.

“I’m sorry,” I ask the man ahead of me in line, who appears to have been spared by the zombie-disease that has stricken his fellow Marylanders. “Are we expecting a snowstorm or a comet?” He turns and looks at me with mounting confusion. “Seriously,” I continue calmly, “It’s going to snow, and then you’re going to shovel, and then it’s going to be over.”

“Shovel?” He grew visibly pale and his eyes widened and dilated. “A shovel! I need a shovel!!”

I wanted to ask him what happened to the one that he carried in the trunk at all times, then decided not to tax his clearly-distraught mind.

Arrived at the Archives, at long last. As I am entering, I can hear a voice making an announcement, but choose to pay it little heed. Get through the metal detector, the inspection of my computer and camera, get my papers stamped, hide my Spy-Coat and Spy-Bag in my Spy-Locker and head up to the next round of security guards.

“Good Morning,” I offer the sullen man behind the counter.

He looks at me, turns and looks pointedly at the clock, then returns his gaze to me.

“You do know we’re closing at twelve.” It’s not a question.

“You’re—but it’s 10:30 now.”

“Yeah.”

“But…” His gaze remains as sympathetic and feeling as a boot and I decide to cut my losses and get upstairs. I had requested some materials before I left the night before and figure that at least I could get through that before I am bodily removed from my seat at Table #29, Seat #4. I am given my cart o’ fun, which I wheel to my seat and open the first box.

It contains absolutely nothing that I need, or indeed want, to see.

I look at the box label and look at my notes. One says “Box 21”. One says “Box 27”. I spend several minutes trying to figure out how my European ‘7’ (with the line through it to keep it from looking like a ‘1’) could look like a ‘1’, and decide that this way leads to nothing but madness and get through the other box before the announcement is made, in a voice struggling to be calm in the face of mounting panic, “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Archives will be closing in fifteen minutes”.

I look up. It’s not snowing yet. At all.

I hand in some requests for Monday and trudge back to the car. As I turn the key in the ignition, a solitary flake swoops down and comes to rest on my windshield. Several older ladies scream in terror and run for cover. I pull out and head for the road.

I think I forgot to mention the fact that the state has already declared a state of emergency and that all schools are getting out at 12:35pm? And that, therefore, everyone and their kids and their Uncle Samuel are now trying to get home along with me. And for some perverse reason, they all have their windshield wipers on I fight the urge to roll down my window and explain in a very loud, but extremely patient voice, that it is barely snowing and that there is nothing to clean from their windshields. But a quick look at the faces of my fellow commuters and I decide the smell of burning rubber might actually be some kind of stimulant for their sanity. And as the radio is playing nothing but increasingly distressed reports about snowfall totals (“There’s already an inch in Silver Spring!!”), I content myself with putting my iPod in one ear and singing along very loudly, to the obvious delight of my fellow commuters.

It would appear that the veneer of southern gentility is falling away. As I get off the highway and enter downtown Bethesda, it looks as if the world has been put on pause. The lights are changing at the intersections, but the cars do not appear to be making any forward progress. Concerned, I edge my way closer. Indeed, it would appear that during a state of emergency, the rules of the road, and especially the rules of common courtesy, fly off to less arctic climes.

Because normally, when you are at an intersection and the light turns green, you progress forward in an orderly manner, until the street ahead of you is full. The people who are behind you and similarly desirous of progressing in a forward direction wait until there is room for their car to fit on the other side of the intersection, Because the lights are slightly staggered, this might take a few moments, but it is things like this that are commonly considered the price to pay for existing in a civilized society. Maryland is no longer a civilized society. Because when the light turns green, it’s as if the last flight out of Casablanca has just been announced. There is a furious stomping of gas pedals, and cars shoot forward with an alacrity for which I had not previously given any cars with Maryland plates. And when the street beyond the intersection is full, they just keep coming. Because it’s snowing, apparently, though I missed the chapter where that was an excuse, but it seems to work for everyone here. Especially the people who are looking to enter the intersection from the perpendicular. They champion the advance progress of these cars with loud, jubilant honking of their horns, and gestures of camaraderie through their windshields and…oh. Wait a second….

It takes me nigh on two hours to get back home. The snow is indeed accumulating, no lie, and I wouldn’t want to be outside doing tai chi, or something, but I still fail to see what everyone is so panicked about. Everyone on our street seems to have stood their windshield wipers up in the air and coated their windshields with trash bags. I am told later that this is so that one can simply lift the trash bag and render the windshield clean. I look at the speaker of this wisdom with blank faced incredulity. Then I realize he’s not joking.

I do notice, however, that the snow is starting to accumulate in the streets. And it occurs to me that I haven’t seen a snow plow since I entered this state…