Yield to the Vehicle without 4WD

I should’ve gone out and gotten a picture when the entire street was packed with two feet of snow. It’s much more dramatic then. But I’ve been meaning to show you what I think is one of the stranger realities of living in a snowy state when the city doesn’t plow the roads. We end up with THREE TRACKS in the street. Yes. THREE (not four as you might imagine). It’s kind of like those kiddie rides at carnivals where the children get to “steer” the car but REALLY the tracks keep the cars on the road. Except that there are only THREE TRACKS because the CENTER ONE OVERLAPS:

Now, I know I’m verbal not quant; and I’m certainly no physics expert. But when the snow is deep, that middle track is VERY NARROW—the photo looks wide because most of the snow is gone right now. But for a long, long time, the middle (SHARED) “track” is only the width of ONE TIRE. So when a car is coming right at you (using the middle track) and you also need the middle track, here is (I’ve learned) the Montana road etiquette: The car with the four wheel drive LEAVES the middle track and goes up onto the snow on the side so that the smaller, non-4WD car can keep going. I figured this out pretty much just by the fact that now that we have a 4WD vehicle, whenever a smaller car is spinning its wheels and trying not to get stuck, I just instinctively pull into the snowbank to try to help them keep moving forward. But then I confirmed it with a native too … Yup. Bigger/4WD vehicle pulls out of the working street and onto the snowpile and everyone hopes for the best.

Isn’t that just a little strange? In Chicago we, you know, REMOVE the snow. What a concept.

Anyway … one more day with Auntie Kali. This morning I made my godmother’s (Anne Parat’s) famous OVEN PANCAKE recipe:

A little fresh lemon juice, a little powdered sugar, and YUM!

Blessings to you all–

Your friend,
Tara B.