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Show HIGH TIME: IrasetBMir S(g(Bort By FLORENCE BITTNER Most Of the time we continue con-tinue on our daily routine, troubled by the dailyness of life, huddling over our personal per-sonal anxieties, but secure in the big basics such as that the sun will come up, the law of gravity will keep us and ours glued to mother earth and that such functions as electricity, elec-tricity, water, light, heat, airplanes, buses and automobiles au-tomobiles will continue on their appointed rounds. SO DEPENDABLE have become the mechanical functions func-tions of our lives we have begun to list them with the , inexorable laws of nature, but f let any one of the basics be fumbled, and chaos wipes out all the mundane. I spent last weekend in Wichita, and if you weren't reading the papers, I'll remind you there was a blizzard bliz-zard thereabouts. 1 should . ..have been warned when they told trie as Iboardeti the plane in Denver, "There is -a fifty-. fifty chance we won't be able to land in Wichita, in which case you'll go to Mobile. We'll get you to Wichita somehow, but we don't guarantee when." WHAT THE heck, I thought. I've never been to Mobile and I can always turn around and go home and forget for-get the meeting I came half way across the country to attend, at-tend, so I took a chance. That time I won and we landed at Wichita. The last plane to make it for the next 40 hours. The trip to the hotel was a fight for the driver of the courtesy car as the wind was determined to send us all tumbling across the open; prairie towards Oanadai"We:: made it and I checked in. No problems. OUR MEETINGS began and the national committee huddled in our downstairs room, intent upon our deliberations. Periodically someone would come in to report on the weather conditions, condi-tions, but that was out there and we were in here. By evening, the hotel was filling up and people were lined at the desk, but ,we were still secure. We went to dinner and later continued with our basement room meeting and let the weather take care of itself. MY ROOM was chilly, and I tried to call the housekeeper for another blanket, but couldn't get an answer, so I put my coat on my bed and went to sleep. I dreamed there was a large dog howling outside my door trying to get in. I awoke in the dark and laid in bed listening to wind the likes of which I haven't heard since my last night with a Davis County east wind. I couldn't see out because the window was frosted over and ice covered on the outside. Next moming I took a glass of orange juice to our basement room and we began our deliberations. Some of our people planned to fly home in the middle of Saturday afternoon, after-noon, but they were told the airport was closed. REALITY began to close in ?n us and our meeting became unimportant. People who had planned to leave were asked to check out of their rooms. The electricity was out in the other half of town and this hotel was taking guests from those without heat or lights. We went to lunch and found one waitress had made it to work. She was on dead run, and people were helping wherever they could R"' ,l!e ,menu was getting imued. It took us two hourl io get a cold sandwich. wePr!LE H0SE P'anes dnuhiL g0mg a"ywhere who hUP,'n r00ms of thos who had planned to stay the nht anyway one man'wllo na?rana.nd Rapids said he nadcal'ed home and he didn't know when he would get there ThdatGnHdRaPids was closed, 'hat made three closed air een him and home" And no hotel reservations nfIif television stations went welhe"'rWeheardha,,hey were evacuating people from because the temperature wa chill factor of forty below. People were being schools and church section of town w tricity. IN OUR hotel, ge and home had bet number one priori! . of the employees ll made it to work anc told the streets we impossible glare wind howled in the shafts and we gav every time a light when bidden by the switch. My flight was scIk Sunday morning at was in the lobby leave by 6:40. No courtesy car, we v was parked out the they could get it si the driver would co would be taken to ti with determined hoi and we began our crawl. The airport looke weekend flophouse to wall people. W plane came in, we al hoping the landir wasn't a skating rinJ crews had sanded we time we were airbon THE EXPERIE! quite painless, actua left me with a badl security. How vulne are. Store all the t will at home, the m leave them, they ar to you. We are de upon men who brs and cold to re-strin wires on frost crust others who plowe sanded runways and cold but necessary cl upon the vagart thousand other ever we cannot control. I came home fe great wonder of ii l! survive. Home neve so good. I wanted house on the head. |