That Sound

With the development of a new city comes thoughtful preparations for the natural disasters that may occur in a city during it's lifespan. Take for instance Scranton, Pennsylvania, as the strong and somewhat large Susquehanna river flows through, 20 foot dikes stand ready for an impending flood.
It probably has been snowing in Pennsylvania even before William Penn was born, but does the city of Scranton prepare for this predicable weekly occurance?

Snowdays were different when I was a kid. Pre-global warming brought blizzards of snow, wet heavy masses of slush caking the steets. My school district spanned through the Back Mountains where plows dared not to go, which gave us a closure edge so to say.

My house was not painted pastel purple and my name did not have Madam as a prefix, yet I could predict, I had a certain ESP as to when the snow was coming, way before the newcasters saw a jetstream. There was an evolutionary timeclock to the snow days. At sunset, on the nights before it snowed, I could hear it coming.

My brother and I sat in dads boat whose canvas cover was as frozen stiff as our speculative pessimism. I told my brother about the sound I heard and he inquired to the tone as he threw icicles through the tire hanging from the pine tree. I told him to listen harder and close his eyes. The sky was the weirdest color at these times and I watched my brothers shiny pink lips reflect the sad almost flourescent purple light as his eyes twitched closed. He couldn't hear it, but to me it sounded like a high yet somehow contradictory low pitched humm, not uncomfortably loud or harsh, it sounded like a rich wind whistle, uncomfortable yet exhilirating like the pinch you get on your spine at a first date kiss. He was jealous that i could hear the snow coming and predict certainty before Vince Sweeney of the 6 o'clock news could.
If the snow started to fall at night before school, every television station posted the school closures on an revolving loop of school names that appeared at the bottom of the screen. It would usually start out with a 2 hour delay but as I wiped the condensation from the kitchen window and held me ear held my ear to listenpast the Agolino's Italian water ice truck, past the Pizza Hut, and over the Appalachains I could hear the snow about to barrel through my neighborhood as valuable as a train full of Alaskan King Crabs.

At times of uncertainty, there was always Bobby Kulick. My brothers childhood friend was an overweight spoiled Irish kid. In the summertime his shorts gathered in between his legs in the crotch area producing what looked like a khaki canvas curtain pulled in at the middle by an invisible pulley. He was quite a dramatic soul, "running" away from his single mothers home often, and finding salvation at our house where he would hang out with my dad, in his annoyance with Kulick, would put him to work cleaning the litter box or sweeping the back porch. I can recall one day after High School, approaching my brothers bedroom door to buy a joint, but instead finding Kulick laying alone on Adam's bed wearing the racoon hat that my cat Mr. Whiskers used as a girlfriend and eating a mini bag of Dorito's while watching MTV's "The Grind". Anyway, Bobby Kulick had a ton of good toys and junk food including a cotton candy maker, a magic 8 ball, a seemingly endless year round supply of girl scout thin mints and he even (discovering my own jealousy) had his own set of red Atlantic suitcases.
But Kulick had what noone else in the tri city area did; a premature alert of school snow closures. Kulick's ma, Cathy, was assistant to the district superintendant, so when he decided that the roads were too icy or slippery, he called Cathy who then called the news stations.
"DAD, we're going to Kulicks!!!!!!" we'd scream up the stairs and ran the 2 blocks downhill to his weird dark, burnt orange carpeted house.
"Guys (lisp) I told, you (takes out retainer) , I ran out of cotton candy sugar last time you were here!"
"It's cool, where's your mom? Showering huh? Is she using the Pantene sample my mom sent down last week? It's ok, we'll wait for her. Say, is your phone on the hook?"
Sometimes Kulick was of no help, like say when he was at his dad's house that was, increasing the jealousy, a sportmens hunting lodge in the Pocono mountains. When Kulick was away I lethargically and half-heartedly prepared for school in hopes that I'd be dressing in my snow jumper and not tights. Last minute decisions were made in the morning hours by school officials as snow plows spun out of control and salt towers ran dry.
The ten seconds that each school name appeared on the screen seemed to be too long. When Penn State got to the screen, you began to get a little dizzy with anticipation, there were a few campuses so you had time to spin in a circle or throw the cat around, and then it came, your schools name, the symmetry of the professional computerized letters so framiliar and perfect, and there it read CLOSED. By the time Richmond High was on the screen Adam was doing flips off of the Lazy Boy onto the day bed and I was unclipping my gloves from the forced air heater.
The sound, that humm, that waaaahwahhwooo, it was like an one toned xylaphone with platinum keys, I could hear it, the sound flowing over my town as I slept, into the backyards in and in front of the sun rise, past the water ice truck, above the Pizza Hut and bouncing over the Appalachains.