You were expecting fear? Panic? People hiding under their beds or permanently decamping to the balmier climes of Boca?
Then you came to the wrong city today.
“Bring it on!” John Kale threw his arms up like a boxer in the middle of a Publix aisle where he’d managed to snag pretty much the last six pack of pineapple juice.
If the Atlanta resident sounded surprisingly resilient, it may have had something to do with the fact that the next Big One hadn’t arrived yet. The highly dreaded “wintry mix” that was supposed to make it a living you-know-what in the metro region on Wednesday was still at least a few hours away.
Meanwhile, the last Big One had hit just two weeks ago, making what was happening today simply feel like the new normal for everyone here.
Er, that might be overstating it a bit.
“Are people used to it?” Audy Maxineau, a guest relations representative at the High Museum of Art repeated the question. Gazing around the museum’s not-exactly-overrun-by-patrons entry pavilion he smiled gently. “I wouldn’t say that.”
What one could say was that metro Atlanta was refusing to just lie down and take it on the chin again today. Two weeks after becoming a national punchline thanks to our inability to make it home through a measly two inches of snow, we totally managed to get the last laugh:
We all just stayed home to begin with. Not only that, our bosses, the school superintendents, heck even the governor himself practically begged us to do so!
Who’s laughing now, Jon Stewart?
And not just laughing, apparently …
“We did gangbusters here yesterday,” Jane Westlake said at Ansley Wine Merchants, where business appeared not to have let up much today. Everything was selling well, albeit more of it in half-gallon sizes than usual.
Co-worker Adam Williams said, “People are just going to hunker down and wait it out, I guess.”
Indeed, there was a certain calm-before-the-storm feel swirling around here with Tuesday afternoon’s misty rain. Much of the rushing around had come on Monday evening, when supermarket shelves were stripped bare of fresh produce and just-in-case jumbo packs of toilet paper and people gassed up the cars they pretty much planned not to drive for the next few days. Much of the hard work likely still lay ahead, with a ferocious mix of sleet, ice, snow and high winds expected to arrive in the hours before daybreak Wednesday and possibly plunge the region into powerless paralysis.
If it does, Matthew Grindstaff suggested, it’ll have come to the wrong, surprisingly resilient city.
“I should get home OK tonight,” the East Atlanta Village resident said as he walked toward his job at Norfolk Southern on Peachtree Street. “And if not, I’ve got books, an extra change of clothes and a toothbrush with me.”
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