Of Filthy Cars and Acceptance

Pondering this morning the lessons life puts in our path, if only we have eyes to see them.

Here in the north, by the time February rolls around the cars one sees on the street are almost universally filthy.

The spectacle is jarring to Southern eyes. Although it's not uncommon back home to see a truck dusted over with red dirt, or red mud when it rains a little, a sign that the owner lives on some red clay road out in the woods somewhere, one does not encounter the ubiquitous northern tableau of vehicles completely caked in frozen muck, many with icicles dangling from the fenders.

Peg couldn't take it when the Honda started to disappear under a grayish veneer of dirty snow and ice--last week she found a car wash after work, and undertook the Sisyphean task of scrubbing away the filth, and re-filling the windshield washer reservoir with something that could handle the constant sub-freezing temperatures, after the original contents froze solid. For a brief period of time, at least the first few blocks after she left the car wash, the Ridgeline shone again, Florida license plate proclaiming to everyone on the road that day that we Floridians may all be crazy, but by God we weren't driving around in a dirty truck.

That lasted maybe a day. One more trip to work and back, a drive down the hill to the YMCA, and the truck looked much as it did before P's cleaning adventure. And much like every other vehicle on the road up here.

All these filthy cars seem out of character for the locals. Their interior spaces are spotless and orderly for the most part, their driveways and sidewalks shoveled within hours of each fresh blanket of snow. They mostly live their lives with a cool discipline that appears in warmer climates more as the exception than the rule.

But during the winter aesthetics are a losing battle, for the most part. Clothes are dour and frumpy because there's no point in dressing to the nines and then burying that sartorial exercise in layers of coats, hats, and scarves. It's the same for women's hair--why bother with an expensive coif if it's just going to be buried under a stocking cap that will undo the effort as soon as it's removed?

And why go to the trouble of standing in a freezing car wash trying to spray away all that road grime, when we know it's going to snow again soon and our efforts will be undone? One must accept that there are places to focus one's efforts, that when it comes to some things winter will prevail no matter what we do. Those dirty cars being driven by women in sweats with bowl haircuts are part of a collective statement that folks here just accept that their environment commands a level of disorder and imperfection, even among a people who live a life of structure and self-discipline.

There are some cool things about New York winters, however. This past weekend P and I drove up the western shore of Cayuga Lake, near Ithaca, and at the top of the lake found ourselves in Seneca Falls.

It is a pretty little town, stretched along the edge of an old canal that leads all the way across the state. The place is supposedly the inspiration for It's a Wonderful Life, or at least that's what the chamber of commerce posits. It was also the site of the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848, a milestone in the history of feminism and human rights activism in general.

Unfortunately for us, the US Park Service Visitor's Center was closed that day, so we had to content ourselves with reading the historical markers outside and snapping a couple pics of us shivering in the raw breeze. Then we adjourned to a bar behind the main drag, in an alley of sorts next to the canal, where our perky bartender lit up when she heard we were from Corning, and told us about her time growing up here. She's in chiropractor school now, hoping to practice in Rochester or Syracuse because they're big enough for her to find work but still close to her roots in the Southern Tier.

The hard cider emboldened me to try something that has always scared the bejesus out of me, but the locals do as a matter of course. As we walked back out into the cold, I noticed footprints all over the ice in the canal. I've never stepped onto a frozen body of water before. Sounds terrifying. Why not give it a try?

So I did, and P snapped this picture before realizing someone had written their ode to the act of physical love in the snow and ice next to me.

I reckon I should've cropped that.

After my ice excursion, we crawled back into the filthy Ridgeline for a drive back through hills and fields covered in a blanket of snow unblemished with footprints, arriving back in Corning in time to buy a nice steak from our new favorite butcher and fall asleep after supper with what I imagine must've been a good movie on the TV.

And so it goes.