Miracle at Grant's tomb.

This is kind of a sea story but I'm not going to say anything about anything but what happened.

A few years back there was a humongous blizzard slated to occur in New York. I was working on an oil barge at the time and the tug skipper opted to ride the mess out at anchor. He anchored up the Hudson River near Grant's tomb. 

While maybe not my first choice of anchorages, it wasn't too bad. 

The blizzard was supposed to dump about three feet of snow. My shipmate and I knew that we were going to have to spend hours shoveling snow just to get the barge operational afterwards.

Winds of about fifty knots were also part of the deal. 

We anchored in flat calm and inside a few minutes we got hit by the snow and it accumulated fast. We looked out the portlight and saw we were really getting dumped on. It seemed like just a few minutes and we were covered with a foot of snow and no end in sight.

I had the night watch and when my shipmate turned in late than night there were at least two feet of snow covering the deck evenly. I told him I'd start shoveling in an hour or so. He agreed.

About ten minutes after he turned in I looked out to see that the snow wasn't coming down vertically any more. The wind that had been forecasted earlier was starting and it picked up and really started blowing.

The snow was completely horizontal. It picked up even more and I noticed that it seemed to be blowing the snow off of the deck.

About a half-hour later I realized that there wasn't a whole lot of snow left on deck and as I watched I saw the wind peeling the snow off of it.

It was fascinating and a joy to watch as the accumulated snow simply disappeared.

Inside another hour the snow stopped falling and the wind continued. It wasn't long before the bulk of the snow on deck was gone.

I didn't bother going out to shovel as my work was done by Mother Nature. Instead I crapped out on the settee and dozed off.

I was awakened by running water from the head. My shipmate was taking a wakeup shower and I glanced out the window. The deck was clear. There were only one or two very small piles of snow on deck.

When he came out of the head I looked at him and suggested that when he got around to it he'd take a broom out with him and get the remaining snow.

It took him less than five minutes.

I gave him a call after the recent blizzard and we laughed about it. We call it the Miracle of Grant's tomb.



To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY