Crabby Philadelphians. In-your-face New Yorkers. And what better to bring out their worst than the snowstorm of the year, right?


Wrong. But let’s back up a little.


Personally, I’ve never held onto the image of urban rudeness, encountering lots of friendly New Yorkers and brotherly Philadelphians. But, yes, many of them are in a hurry, and nothing provokes a round of bad tempers like anything that keeps folks from getting to, from and across town.


Ergo, the Blizzard of 2006, which socked the East Coast last weekend and left a trail of canceled flights, delayed trains and lakes of slush on the streets.


It was a perfect time to visit the Big Apple!


I had a story assignment in the city Tuesday, but decided to combine business with pleasure by heading up to New York Monday on my day off. All this had been planned in January, when seasonal snow had yet to fall.


Not so on Monday. The storm, which dumped 27 inches of white stuff on Central Park over the weekend, was over. Its aftereffects were not.


My train, which was to go directly to New York from Lancaster, ran only as far as Philadelphia. OK, no problem; there was a connecting train in Philly, on which my ticket would be honored.


My ticket, and what had to be 1,000 others. For other connections had been cancelled, and this was apparently the only train in America that would enable folks to get to New York and Boston.


It wasn’t just standing room only; it was a ride I likened to the refugee train scene in “Dr. Zhivago.” It was a recipe for a cauldron of complaints.


Except I heard none. Not one. People threw in the collective towel and realized that there was no sense in whining.


In fact, some of them smiled at grim jokes, like my “Dr. Zhivago” reference, which amused a nice lady from Rhode Island. The guy who stood across from me at the end of the car helped me work out a strategy on where we could stow our bags and coats. Self-centered, spoiled, unhelpful urbanites? As they say in New York, fuggedaboutit.


I was, however, grateful to walk — yes, walk — the 20 blocks to my hotel (my personal fortune to whoever invented wheeled luggage). “Fuggedaboutit,” you see, also applied to getting a taxi. Which made for crowded sidewalks — that ended every block in puddles the size of Lake Michigan.


It was not a good day for the well-heeled of Fifth Avenue to be well-heeled. Which, you would think, would bring a chorus of lamentations from the fashionably shoed trying to navigate every flooded street corner.


Again, I didn’t hear a discouraging word. At the end of every block, entire hordes stopped, eyed the water, mentally navigated a passage around it, and went on with matters. The only complaints I heard for two days came from me, when I did get a taxi, and it took forever to get anywhere.


I should have taken a lesson from my tolerant, patient, big-city brethren.




Stephen Kopfinger is a Sunday News staff writer. Contact him at skopfinger@lnpnews.com blog comments powered by Disqus